


Body Gold

by poetic_leopard



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parish starring as Self-Loathing Flower-Lover, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Angst, Bronan Moments, Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, Noah Being Cutesy + Creepy, Pure Pynch And All That, Ronan Flirts, Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent Friendship, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Ronan Lynch starring as Death Metal Boy, Sarchengsey Is A Thing, Slow Burn, canon elements in AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_leopard/pseuds/poetic_leopard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’d have to give due props to Michelangelo as well,” Death Metal Boy mumbled, on his way out. “You know, for The Creation of Adam?” he winked as he slithered out of the store. </p><p>{tattoo/florist AU because apparently i'm a sucker for the cliche, but here, please indulge me}.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Painting Flowers

It was a coldblooded October afternoon, the sky was whited out by an oilspill of blue-grey clouds and soft rain tapped its little fists against the shivering bodies of windows and suburban rooftops. The shop smelled of fresh poppies and smiting marigolds, blushing lilacs and rum-red roses. Of course, that’s what the shop always smelt like, but the rain seemed to aggrandize the sweet breath of the flowers.  
  
Adam was bleary-eyed and bored, leaning against the wall and skimming through a physics textbook with the back of a pencil jammed in the corner of his mouth, playing a seesaw between his teeth. His shift at ‘Moon’s Flora & Fauna’ would end at five-thirty, and at six he had to be at the auto garage. He still had a fat six hours of work ahead of him before he could finally go home and hit the pillows, and that was _if_ he finished revising the four chapters he had left to rummage for tomorrow’s exam, and that was _if_ his insomnia didn’t decide to rear its ugly head as it oh-so often did.  
  
He was quite frankly exhausted. Of this lifeless life. working these endless shifts at these mediocre jobs. Of striving to earn that sparkling grade even with the possibility of some entitled Aglionby white-collar swooping in at the right moment and snatching it from underneath him.  
  
The flower shop was perhaps a quieter and more peaceful environment than any of his other routine pit stops. He often got a good lot of reading and school work done on the shift. 

The shop was small, larger than Adam’s apartment above St. Agnes, but smaller than say, the average homeowners’ living room. His boss, Margaret, (or Moon as she would ask you to call her), often stressed that it was important to keep the place highly illuminated and congenial at all times. The wallpaper was all canary yellow, a good portion of the shop was yellow. So much in fact that if you were to play the ‘I Spy’ game in here and say you spotted something yellow, the other person would have a hard time narrowing it down to whatever you were hinting at. _Yellow, a cheery, non-violent color. And bright, like the sun!_ Moon would say, and then something about subliminal advertising.

The windows were large enough that daylight conquered every corner of the store, almost snaking its way to the very back. Bowls of dried herbs sat in every stray corner. Bright vines of gardenia and chrysanthemums and hanging crowns of potpourri were strung upside down from the ceiling. The flowers were all well adorned without looking crammed or out of place. Moon was immaculate and thorough with her interior designing. Adam had often thought that she should just close the flower shop down and start an interior designing business, which would probably earn her a lot more money than selling flowers ever would, even if it was a secondary source of income.

The flower shop didn’t get much traffic, the disappointing truth remained that a lot of these caked up bouquets wouldn’t ever get to see the light of day. Adam only kept the job because he was desperate and because Moon had promised him a doable paycheck at the end of every week. It wasn’t even close to good money, but it was _something_ . Despite Henrietta being a small town wherein there was enough of leeway in the markets to monopolize on a certain good or product, flowers just weren’t that popular an item anymore. Not in the world of eBay and Amazon Prime. Not in the world of snazzy wristwatches and DIY Gift Ideas, Guaranteed To Impress That Special One!  
  
Nobody wanted a handful of freshly-picked flowers anymore. Nobody wanted these brightly-painted creatures that were just as mortal as they were. Flowers shriveled and died. Flowers attracted insects. Flowers were temporary. Adam thought that that’s what made flowers the ideal gift, they were in some ways, a metaphor for human life and that in itself was an ironically delicious concept, a few bucks well spent. Flowers made you ponder, made you stop and think. Plus, offering someone a crimson rose or a sun-dipped delilah, wasn’t that the ultimate token of love? Wasn’t that the old romantic notion popularized by the Renaissance poets and sixties’ Hollywood movies? Marilyn Monroe with stars in her eyes and a lavender in her hair. James Dean posing for a fashion magazine shoot with a sunflower in his mouth.  
  
A time of rose-tinted glasses and far less smoke in the air.  
  
Adam ached for the good ol’ days, back when a new flower shop down the block would’ve been the talk of a little bustling town. Back when these magical miracles of nature still held the weight of gods. Back when a primly embellished bouquet of dandelions would’ve been _enough_.

The new age was complicated, greedy and a materialistic disaster.  
  
“It isn’t _t_ _hat_ bad,” said the ghost who hung out at the back of the store, with a few silhouetting shadows and last month’s bouquets that stood on their last legs. “We have netflix and hoverboards now,”

Either Adam had been thinking out loud or Noah Czerny had just done that immensely creepy thing again where he’d practically read his mind.

“The  _segways_ don’t even deserve to be called hoverboards, they _don’t_ hover,” Adam pointed out. “And where did you come from?” he regretted his choice of words the moment they’d left his mouth.  
  
You didn’t just ask a dead person where he went after he'd died.  
  
“The Underworld,” Noah said teasingly, playing along. Adam was slightly relieved. Noah was a little bit terrifying when he wasn’t feeling up to it, his jovial mood was welcome. “I was watching cat videos. We have great wifi down there.”  
  
Adam rolled his eyes as he glanced back at his textbook, wide and wordy and demanding to be read. “Another pop quiz? Mr. Saltzman is literally the hound of the century. Does he ever tire of torturing his students? Do you think he holds them up by their ankles and shakes the answers out of them if they fail his class?”  
  
There Noah was again, with the strange humor. Adam wasn’t sure if that was a side effect of being dead or if it was just his pre-mortem personality shining through the floodgates. Either way, Adam admittedly enjoyed having Noah around for company. He wasn’t quite sure if he could actually use the term friends to describe what they were, but it seemed like the second best way to put it.  
  
“Physics test,” Adam sighed. “And its Mrs. Gupta now,”  
  
Noah’s smudgy face darkened as some kind of realization dawned over him.  
  
Noah liked to hover from shop to shop, but the flower shop was one of his favorite spaces to haunt. Something about the breathy air (although in hindsight, he might’ve just been saying that to be ironic) and the uplifting colors of the bloomers. The first time Adam had seen the boy ghost, he hadn’t known that he was a ghost. Noah could look real enough, sometimes. He had pale hair and pale skin and eyes that were almost alive when they twinkled in the right light.  
  
Almost felt like the right word to describe Noah. An almost boy, an almost life.  
  
Henrietta was just another one of those strange little Virginia towns. Suburban America was a beacon of bizarre happenings flittering right in between the ordinary if you looked hard enough. People here wouldn’t blink an eye at you if you were traipsing down a street naked except for a pair of polka-dot socks and a feathered hat.

It wasn’t that people minded their own business the way they did in big cities, people talked, but only in the silence and safety of their own homes. People here were lazy and heedless and wan.

Perplexing young boys who looked like they had had all the life sucked out of them, wasn’t an outlandish sighting by a stretch. Adam should know, he was probably considered one of them.  
  
Noah was definitely young, or at least, he appeared young. He must’ve been around Adam’s age when he died, or perhaps a year younger. Either way, Noah was a disturbing reflection of what might be.  
  
He never brought up his death, but Adam had done his own digging to find out. The result had been heavily disturbing, because Noah hadn’t died, he’d been _killed_ . Backstabbed by a friend.  
  
Noah would never bring it up, so they never talked about it.  

When Noah had first flickered in and out of reality, Adam had been two seconds from pissing himself and his heart had probably leapt out of his body. Slowly, he’d come to terms with it. Came to terms with the fact that his town was a little out of the ordinary, or that perhaps this was what was left of ordinary. He considered himself to be a man of science, but he could acknowledge that there were still a lot of mysteries out there that science hadn’t managed to crack yet. He did firmly believe that it would eventually, though.   
  
All rational things had an explanation.  
  
Except sometimes, when Noah’s mouth twisted into the grotesque shape that no mouth should ever take, when his eyes bled like oblivion and he choked out a sobbing scream, Adam wondered if perhaps he was witnessing his first irrational thing. If some things in this world existed outside of this safely constructed mold of pseudo-reality they lived in.

In whatever case, Noah was kind of Adam’s only friend. It wasn’t like he was socially awkward, or like he loathed all people with the fury of a thousand burning suns.  
  
Adam just lacked… time.  
  
Perhaps if he lived in a world where he didn’t work three jobs and slog night and day for a gleaming recommendation so that he could leave this godforsaken little town behind. Then perhaps, he would’ve made friends. But if a social life was nothing but a wishful dream that he couldn’t quite reach, then having friends were probably the same thing.

Not to mention that most of the boys he went to school with were bastards. Rich, pompous, tan-skinned and golden-haired beasts. The kind of boys who smelt like dollar bills and rode around in cars brighter than Adam’s future. The kind of boys who spent their summers in Milan and their winters in Switzerland, the kind of boys who had hands smooth as silk from never having to work a day in their blessed lives.

The Raven Boys, they called them. Either you wanted to be them or you wanted to be with them. Adam just wanted to eradicate their type from the universe, create a killer machine robot of vast intelligence in his evil lab and send it after them all.  
  
The path that had paved its way to Aglionby for Adam was one that was marked in his sweat and blood.  
  
Then there was Blue, Blue Sargent, also known as his ex-and-only-ever girlfriend. They were still sort of friends, he supposed, although he’d been limiting his visits to her cafe ever since the break-up, because he seemed to be taking it much harder than she was. It wasn’t that he wanted her to cry about it, well, maybe a little. He’d certainly had his fair share of tear-rimmed sleepless nights.

Blue had been a creature of great wonders. She was sensible and strong-headed, strange and snarky. She was never afraid to stand up for what she believed in, and whilst not as down-in-the-dumps as Adam was, she understood the value of money and often asked ‘those upper-crust assholes’ to put their cash where their castles were.

“Don’t you mean money where their mouths are?” Adam had asked, once.  
  
“I don’t enjoy paraphrasing, unless I’m quoting Nelson Mandela or Maya Angelou,” Blue had stated, simply. Adam had backed off. “Chops for creativity,” and she’d grinned like a sunbeam.  
  
“Thanks,”  
  
She was nice. It’d been nice. Adam had lacked nice things all his life, Robert Parrish had made sure of that. 

“Okay, I’m beginning to forget, which one of us is dead?” Noah said snidely, leading Adam away from his thoughts. “Because you’re beginning to look as pale as me,” he continued, before frowning slightly. “Is it as me, or as I? I’m getting a little crusty on my grammar,”  
  
“It’s an elliptical clause,” Adam replied. “So either would be grammatically standard, really. Depends on you.”  
  
Noah shrugged. “Whatever. As I was saying, you look like something that’s been left to rust in the back of a garbage truck. It’s when people start looking deader than I am that I get worried. What’s going on?”

“You don’t look so bad,” Adam sighed, in a lame attempt to make a dead person feel better.  
  
“I’m definitely winning all of Casper’s beauty pageants, that’s for sure. Now stop evading the question.”

“I haven’t eaten in like six hours,” Adam admitted, dragging his palms across his tired face.  
  
His diet consisted 96% of coffee and 4% of actual food. His breakfast that morning had been a cold egg sandwich and hash browns from the McDonald's down his home block.  
  
“Take a snack break,” Noah muttered. “Jeez, it’s not that difficult.”  
  
“I will, I’m just…”  
  
“An overachiever? An idiot? A self-loathing, self-pitying brooder?” Noah derided.  
  
“Waiting for Margaret to return so she can take over while I’m on break. Jesus. Rude much?” Adam finished, tightly.  
  
Noah made a flippant gesture with his hand. “I’ll watch over the shop, Margaret doesn’t even notice when I tamper with the glitter and nobody’s going to come in anyway.”  
  
“You can’t. You’re a ghost,” Adam didn’t say it rudely, only matter-of-factly.  
  
“So are you,” Noah replied, also matter-of-factly.

* * *

 

Ronan was going to bash someone’s head in. Most likely, his own. Or perhaps this bubbly freshmen’s would do, considering she couldn’t fucking sit still for two _goddamn_ seconds--

“Look, the pain you’ll experience if you don’t move will be nothing compared to what you’ll go through if you’re flopping around like a fish. _Be still,_ yeah?” Ronan drawled irritably as he pressed the girl’s wrist down and began to lower the sterile needle towards her skin.  
  
“Maybe you’ll have to find other means of getting me to sit still,” the girl purred, blinking at him from under a fringe of fake lashes. He didn’t even pretend like he was enticed. People who knew Ronan called him a lot of things: a drunk, a gutterpunk, a wild-flyer, but nobody could spite him for his lack of honesty, really, he would dare them to try.  
  
Instead of playing coy, he offered her a dark smirk and leaned in so that his chin was almost touching hers, but not quite.  
  
The girl closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.  
  
“I like cock,” he whispered faintly, surreptitiously.  
  
The girl’s eyes flew open.  
  
Ronan had to suppress a chuckle as he leaned back into place and the girl’s cheeks flamed.  
  
“Should we get back to your tattoo now, sweetheart?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.  
  
“Don’t be an asshole, Ronan!” Matthew called, from somewhere behind them.  
  
“I’m being perfectly fucking civil!” Ronan called back.  
  
The girl broke into a smile, handling herself well under the thin roof of her humiliation. “That just makes me find you even more attractive, you know,” Ronan simply scoffed, took the girl’s arm and got back to work.  
  
He couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of kinky shit she must be into, but he was tempted to check her browser history.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to flirtatious customers. As Ronan saw it, tattooing someone was an intimate art. It required skin-to-skin contact, it enticed _and_ it was allowing oneself to be vulnerable in front of a complete stranger. Tattoos were immensely personal things, thus making Ronan feel like every client of his was sharing a secret with him. In return, he was promising to keep it safe for them and honor it by turning it into a mural. Sometimes, marking someone with his needles felt just like marking someone with his mouth, but Ronan wasn’t one to mix business with pleasure.  
  
Women and men alike certainly attempted to entice Ronan into blurring the lines of the steel-bars that were those boundaries of his. His looks were just as renowned as his skill. His eyes were fashioned like they’d drained the sky, his jawline was sharp enough to cut yourself on, his mostly-shaved head and tall, lean build burned itself into memory. The metal barbs and rings that pierced his ears and eyebrows drew even more attention to the incendiary lines of his face. He was a walking billboard lit in neon.  
  
He also preferred to work shirtless, allowing his customers a full view of the dark and magnificent tattoo that snaked across the ridges of his back, starting from the nape of his neck carrying on all the way to his lower back. He wore an unmovable smirk at all times and his every movement felt like an innuendo of some kind. He smiled at you like he could read every dirty thought your brain had ever produced and his hands worked the needle just like a paintbrush. 

Sometimes, Ronan wondered if starting his own little tattoo parlor had been the shittiest idea he’d ever had, which was a preposterous thought, considering the ratio of his shitty ideas to his eventual hindsight.

Perhaps hindsight really was 20/20.  
  
The Snakepit was a fancy establishment. It was a red brick building stood in between other red brick buildings on the wealthiest block of town. All of Henrietta’s mighty swans flocked to their doorstep. They tattooed the sons and daughters of Congressmen and oil barons, film directors and aldermen. Anyone who was looking to get inked knew that The Snakepit was the best tattoo parlor in all of Henrietta.  
  
It was run by the three Lynch brothers, sons of the late local businessman, Niall Lynch. Each of the siblings were oceans apart from each other, but similar traits revealed themselves if one observed hard enough. They all had striking blue eyes, for example, and the sort of laughter that hung in the room long after it had died down.  
  
Declan, the oldest sibling managed all the financial aspects of the business, he had a warm, charming smile and enough wit to talk himself out of a lobotomy. He was built like a building, tall, square shoulders, cheekbones like blades and his hair was as dark as the contentious and mysterious business he dealt with in the shadows. He didn’t have a whole lot of tattoos, and the ones he did have couldn’t be seen when he wore anything more than a bathing suit.

Matthew, the youngest and the most innocent of the siblings, didn’t sport any tattoos, but he worked with them all the same. He used his apricot-sweet voice to schedule client appointments, play nice with the health inspector and promote the shop’s superiority to all other places. His summer-warmed golden hair and flowery smile cleared up some of the storm clouds that perpetually hung off his older brothers.  
  
Ronan, the remaining Lynch and the prized middle son, was perhaps the haughtiest of the lot. He was a self-proclaimed asshole who swore like a drunken sailor in a shipwreck and dressed in only two shades: black and blacker. Ronan’s passion for artistry hummed inside everything that he touched. He was The Snakepits’ main tattooist, painting the most intricate and inimitable tattoos anyone had ever seen. His secret, of course (and he had plenty) was that he pulled all of his art from his dreams. Filtering the good from the bad, the pristine from the vulgar. He would see something in a dream, and then he’d sketch it into his book to later mint into a full-blown tattoo.  
  
All three brothers had their father’s tendency to get into trouble.   
  
They didn’t do it for the money. Their father’s last will and testament sealed their futures in crisp green wrapping paper, so theoretically, if they got fed up, they could just shut the whole operation down without wiping much of a sweat.

And yet, there was an electric and contagious energy to everything inside their little shop. From the brightly lit ceilings to the neon posters swathing all of the walls to the lava lamps and the ostentatiously segregated chambers ensuring the privacy of each customer, painted red to emulate the chambers of a human heart. The posters were all either black-and-white images of bands very few had heard of in concert, or half-burnt photos in frames of famous dead people, or twisted, horrifying paintings that Ronan had done himself, each one a portrait of the strange creatures from his dreams. They kept the place dark and neat, sexy and inviting. Electronic music pulsed through the black marrow of the shop at all times, and they kept the parlor open from eight in the morning to eight in the evening.  
  
While Declan and Matthew handled simpler inks, gaudy infinity symbols and cheesy zodiac signs, common Latin quotes instilled for people who didn’t even fucking speak Latin, Roman numerals (the whole stinking lot) and cartoon characters, Ronan strictly stuck to sleeves and backs and thighs. He tattooed people who were just as passionate about their body art as he was, who wore his masterpieces like stars. He was all about strange flaming skulls and geometric minimalism and chaotic images lush with hefty metaphors.

About an hour and a half later, Ronan wiped away the last few bits of blood and ink from the girl’s arm and leaned back a little in his chair to survey the finished piece.  
  
“Is that it? Is it done?” the girl asked, blinking in confusion.  
  
“Yeah,” he nodded, with a small smile that probably didn’t look like a smile to anyone else. “All finished.”

She’d wanted a heavily-shaded raven in flight, which was right up Ronan’s alley. Ravens were a popular symbol among the people of Henrietta, they wore them on their posters and emblems, their mascots and jewellery. Ronan even had a pet raven named Chainsaw.

He began to explain the standard healing procedure to the girl. “Just grab our ointment and card at the register from Matthew, he’ll give you the rundown.”  
  
He finished taping the inked area down with gauze and removed one of his latex gloves with a snap. “You’re good to go,” he remarked.  
  
“Thank you! Thank you! I love it!” the girl blabbed. What was her name? Janet? Jenny? Jordan? He couldn’t quite remember. Not that he really gave a damn, he was mostly just glad it was over. It was past lunch break and he was starving, plus, he was taking the rest of the day off. He had to make an errand run for the impromptu surprise party he and Declan had planned for Matthew’s birthday the following day, and a meet up with Gansey and his _amours_ soon after.

He rolled his stool over to the garbage bin and disposed of his gloves before pushing off it and shuffling over to Matthew, who’d just finished speaking with their latest client.

“How’d you manage to keep Dora the Explorer from bouncing off into oblivion?” Matthew asked, teasingly.  
  
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Ronan replied, with a dark smirk, still clad in nothing but low-rise jeans and motorcycle boots and the multiple leather bands that clung helplessly to his wrists, but he never took those off, not even in the shower.  
  
“Dora, really?” Declan said, emerging from one of the secluded chambers in a crisply pressed t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap. “She reminded me more of that Power Puff Girl, the one with the yellow pigtails?”  
  
“Bubbles!” Matthew supplied.  
  
“That one,” Declan nodded.  
  
“You two are so fucking gay,” Ronan remarked.  
  
“Look who’s talking,” Matthew muttered.

“What,” Ronan shrugged, slipping his hands into his pockets. “It’s okay when _I_ say it.”  
  
“Hey bro, your groupies have left the building. Put some fucking clothes on.” Declan snapped.  
  
Ronan curled his tongue and shot his brother an innocent smile as he pulled his hand out of his pocket and shoved his middle finger in Declan’s face. The two brothers didn’t get along very well, but they were always attempting cordialness for the sake of Matthew. Some days went smoother than others. Still, they were trying, and that was the one thing they could agree on.  
  
“So you’re leaving me to hold down the fort all by lonesome again, aren’t you?” Matthew mumbled petulantly in between chews. He was always chewing gum and smelling like strawberries. It was repulsive.  
  
“I have exactly five minutes to get ready for a three-hour meeting,” Declan said as he headed over to the sink to wash off his hands.

“Don’t sink my ship,” Ronan said simply, as he pulled on a dark grey muscle tee and grabbed his biker jacket from the coat stand.

“No promises but I’ll look out for icebergs,” Matthew replied.

“We’ll raise your pay,” Declan assured.  
  
“You guys are the best!” Matthew grinned, as Ronan headed out of the shop, pulling his hood over his head to take refuge from the rain.  
  
The first thing that he had to do was stop by the florist across the street and pick up a bouquet of roses or dandelions or some shit. They were supposed to be on Gansey’s behalf, Ronan himself was planning on getting Matthew one of those remote-control helicopter things that he’d always adored as a kid, but Gansey preached that flowers were a vital token of love and that Matthew seemed like the type of kid who’d appreciate that.  
  
He wasn’t wrong, so a glorified pile of flowers was going to accompany the cool helicopter. The perfect blend of sweet and impish, which summed up his brother pretty well, all things considering. Gansey was going to fucking owe him, though.  
  
Ronan had street-cred to maintain, and walking into a flower shop midday was hindering it in the most brutal of manners. Still, Ronan would steal the moon for his little brother if he’d asked, so he’d take the embarrassment, and then he’d find a way to wreck revenge on Gansey.  
  
The amicable thought of torturing the shit out of his best friend was almost enough to keep him going for the rest of the day.


	2. Comatose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _thank you so much to everyone who has been commenting, i'd really appreciate if you'd leave me one for every chapter, your words mean a lot and keep me writing. <3_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Look at you, blindly clinging to earth as though it were the vineyards of heaven  
>  while the fields go up in flames around you-_
> 
> _\- Louise Gluck, excerpt of 'Harvest', The Wild Iris_

* * *

 “Okay flowers, flowers,” someone muttered. “I need flowers.”  
  
Adam looked up with a jerk, the spliced ringing of the tiny bell that announced customer’s arrivals and the stranger’s deep voice enough to jar him out of the Fundamentals of Physics. Noah shrunk back into… wherever it was that he went. The hair standing at the back of Adam’s neck the only suggestion of his continued existence.

_Finally_ , he thought. A customer.

Or maybe not.

Adam had to bite his tongue to keep his jaw from dropping cartoonishly low. If the person standing in front of him hadn’t just loudly declared his very urgent desire for flowers, Adam would’ve asked the guy if he was lost. He had broad shoulders and a stare that could melt diamond. All Adam had needed was one look and it became insanely obvious that this was another Aglionby staple. Spoiled, rich, dressed to repel.

Yet there was something different about him, something that Adam couldn’t quite place, in the hollows beneath his tropic blue eyes and the moth-eaten leather of the bands he wore around his wrist. Something that suggested this book was more than its cover. Even if Adam wasn’t interested in the read, this boy was the kind of person you couldn’t help but look at, like all the air in the room swivelled right to him. Most Raven Boys looked the same, and you could easily spot one by his gold-embellished watch or his big shady sunglasses or his flashy sports car. They all carried an identically vicious ignorance about the world around them, a gestational gift from their phony parents.

This boy… He was rough around the edges despite the expensive clothes, and there was a glistering spark to his demeanor, as if he’d walked out of a spaceship or something. He did look ignorant, but not naturally so. More like he was putting on a display of it.

Adam didn’t think of himself as the judgemental type, or at least he tried not to be, but the guy was dressed in motorcycle boots for crying out loud. He had a shaved head and enough piercings to cause interference with a metal detector. The juxtaposition was so awfully ridiculous, this dark boy in this bright room, Adam would’ve delighted in it, if not for the fact that he hated this boy’s kind. He looked like he ought to belong in a biker gang or a shady club in some dank alley whistling on passerbys. He certainly seemed like he couldn’t be caught dead in a florist shop.

The boy shuffled in like he owned the place, perusing through the flowers, his wet shoes whining softly against the polished floors, tracking damp leaves and pebbles in. The flowers seemed to magnetize around him, as if they were trying to compensate and shift and metamorph to compose his presence, and in with him came the scent of expensive cologne and gasoline. He was loud and subversive and Adam disliked him already.

The boy, however, looked just as surprised when he laid eyes on him as vice versa. He stopped short right in front of Adam’s desk and the corner of his mouth tugged a little. “Are you ‘Moon?’” he asked, making little presumptuous air quotes at the nickname.

Adam fixed him with a blank stare. “No,” he said. “She’s my boss.”

“Ah,” he nodded, already losing interest in Adam as he dribbled his fingers over his head and drifted over to examine the gift baskets section. “I guess that makes more sense but damn did I have this awesome pick-up line queued up which kind of required for you to go by that.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint,” Adam replied, tersely. “Now, you said you wanted flowers?”

The boy looked up from the chocolate bar he’d pulled out of the gift basket to lock eyes with Adam. “I didn’t say I was disappointed.”

Adam attempted to keep the blatant confusion off his face.

He dropped the chocolate bar back into the basket. “Yes! Flowers. Give me some,”

Adam stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve obviously never bought anyone flowers before,”

The guy shrugged. “Not really the flowery type,” he said, like it wasn’t blaringly obvious.

“What kind do you want?” Adam asked. “Oh, shit. How many kinds can there be? Just… Any. Any kind?”

“Are they for a spouse?” Adam asked.

The Raven boy smirked into a decorative bowl of potpourri. “Wouldn’t you like to know,”

The innuendos or flirting or whatever it was that the boy was doing completely caught Adam off guard. It didn’t at all add up with what he knew about Raven boys, with what he’d seen of Raven boys. Adam cleared his throat. “I’m asking so that I can determine what kind of flowers you should be getting,”

The boy had now made his way to the back of the shop where Noah often lingered, where they kept the old stock. He had this restless, uncontained energy to him. Perhaps he’d had an espresso shot or five before strolling in here, or perhaps, that’s just how he always was. Adam examined the car keys the boy had left on the counter. It had some type of garish Death Metal logo on it.

“They’re for my little brother,”

“How little?”

“Sixteen.”

Adam knew very few sixteen-year-old boys who enjoyed flowers, but he wasn’t going to chase off a potential investor.

“Right. Well, we have this vibrantly mismatched bouquet of foxgloves, lavenders and four-o-clocks that absolutely anybody would love for its brightness and vivacity,” Adam turned around and gently picked up a small, multicolored bouquet from the bottom shelf behind him and placed it on the counter for Death Metal Boy to examine. Adam caught Death Metal Boy’s amused smile and the way he soundlessly mouthed the word ‘vivacity’ either mockingly or suggestively.

He ambled back to the counter and studied the flowers like he was studying the palm of someone’s hand. “Do they do anything besides look pretty?”

“They talk in their sleep and they’ll seduce your mother,” Adam replied in a deadpan.

“Good thing my mother’s not around.”

Adam almost asked. He chose not to. It was none of his business. Why was he even curious?

“Seriously. They’re like Victoria Secret models. Gorgeous and useless and they’ll all probably die young.” Ronan murmured.

“Man, if Blue could hear you right now,” Adam was sure he’d mumbled it ever-so-silently to himself, but Death Metal boy had ears like a bat. His eyes almost popped out of his head.

"You know Blue?”

“ _You_ know Blue?”

Adam refused to believe that his ex-girlfriend was involved with somebody like Death Metal Boy. It just couldn’t be. Not unless he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone.

“Pretty sure there’s only one Blue Sargent in all of Henrietta,” Death Metal Boy chuckled.

“In all of the world, you mean.” Adam corrected. “Is she your…?” Adam gulped.

Ronan took a few seconds to register what he was insinuating before bursting into dry, crooked laughter. “Me and the _maggot?_ Yeah, right,” he shook his head. “Nah man, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re dating her, or well… dating _them_. Whatever.”

“Them?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s as poly as they come.”

_Since when?_ Adam thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. There was a lot he didn’t know about a lot of people, perhaps Blue had never been the person he’d thought she was. It wasn’t like Adam was surprised, people were rarely what they seemed. Especially, for some reason, around him.

“How much for the bouquet?” Death Metal Boy asked, changing the subject before Adam could think up a response that didn’t make him sound bitter or like he was prying.

“Uh, they’re for $9.99”

“Sweet,” Death Metal Boy yanked a ten dollar bill out of his pocket and slapped it on the counter like it was a dirty old napkin. Envy burned in Adam’s gut. He couldn’t even pay for gas without flinching. Death Metal Boy then turned around, to stare at a couple decorative paintings that hung on the walls. “Is that Van Gogh?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “My boss is a fan.”

“Never really warmed up to his work,” Death Metal Boy muttered, whirling back around. “A little too simplistic. Now Milton Resnick, avant-garde. That branch of art is… cosmic.”

Adam gaped at the boy like he’d sprouted another head. Death Metal Boy broke into a smile that Adam felt like a splinter in his side. “Thanks for the bouquet, man.”

He leaned over and took the flowers from off the counter.

“Uh, I’m going to need your name and number. For the customer registry.”Adam added quickly, before Death Metal Boy got any… craftier ideas.

“Ronan Lynch,” he replied, swiftly.

“Wait, like as in Niall Lynch’s son?” Ronan’s smirk didn’t waver, but there was a flicker in his eyes, like a haunting. Adam instantly felt guilty, they’d all read about what had happened in the papers. Violent crimes in small towns like these didn't often go disregarded. In fact, fear catapulted from every street, there would be precautionary curfews up even months after, people would talk in hushed voices with terrified eyes, sip their morning coffees and hug their families and be glad that they weren't the victim.

What had happened to Ronan’s father, it was animalistic.

He'd been beaten to death by a tire iron, and Adam wasn't exactly sure what that had done to the man’s poor wife, but he couldn't imagine it'd been remotely good. No wonder she wasn't in the picture.

“Unfortunately,” he replied.

“I’m sorry,”

He knew it meant absolutely nothing, but it would help ease his conscience from bringing it up in the first place, he wouldn't have if he hadn’t been so goddamned shocked. You heard about people in Henrietta, word got around. He'd known of the Lynch’s, but he’d never met one of them in person before. He knew this boy went to his school, he knew that he passed their family home and farm estate on his way to and fro from school everyday. He knew about the fancy tattoo parlour they owned down the block. Now that he thought about it, it was almost strange he hadn't bumped into the boy sooner. Maybe he had and he merely didn't remember, Adam gave Ronan a once-over.

No, he then decided, he would’ve remembered that face.

Whatever Ronan Lynch was, _forgettable_ wasn't it.

Ronan pressed his thumb into his jaw, the tension lifted. “Or maybe I’m the son of David Lynch. Could be one or the other.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “So you’re the guy who owns The Snakepit.”

“One of three heads of the corporate dog,” he grinned. “Although, you don’t seem like the type to get inked.”

“Are you kidding? You get like, triple the traffic we do. We hate you guys.”

“Really? Fuck. I always thought this place was a drug front.” Ronan admitted.

Adam scoffed. “Seriously?”

“I don’t think regular people could tell weed apart from most of these green bastards you’ve been selling,” he said, gesturing at small a ficus tree that sat by the cash register.

“I’m no botanist but you’re probably very wrong,”

Ronan shrugged and then fixed his aquamarine gaze on Adam. “You should stop by our shop anyway. You might find that we have _very_ satisfactory customer service policies, and maybe I’ll even give you an admirer’s discount,” Adam smiled despite himself, “I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing,”

“You might find that I’m kind of a connoisseur of nonexistent things,” he said, cryptically, slipping his card across the counter.

Adam opened his mouth to respond, but Ronan was already turning on his heels to leave. “I’d have to give due props to Michelangelo as well,” he mumbled, on his way out. “You know, for The Creation of Adam?” he winked as he slithered out of the store.

Adam stared down at the card. It was handcrafted, probably charcoal paper. The Snakepit was stamped across it in bold neon letters, and an illustration of a mean looking snake curled around it, like from one of those Harry Potter graphic novels. It took him about a minute to regain his bearings, to realize that the boy had gauged his name off the tag he wore rather than from some kind of psychic ability and that he’d managed to leave him rendered speechless for long enough that he’d almost forgotten he had a test tomorrow.

Adam stared down at the dollar bill he’d left him like it was coated in poison.

“Well, that whole exchange was definitely worth the omnipresence.” Noah whispered invisibly in his ear.

* * *

He headed to the Barns to double-check on everything before the party planning crew hauled in. Blue was in charge of streamers, balloons and cake, promising that Maura's cakes were not anywhere near as poisonous as her brews, Cheng was bringing his portable stereo system from Litchfield and Gansey promised he would set up the grill and cook everyone some barbecued steak as long as nobody asked him questions about the sauce he was using. Apparently it was some sort of Gansey secret family recipe, which probably entailed grim chances of caviar. 

He found The Barns just as he'd left it, and his stomach tumbled out from underneath him. He was only setting this party up at the Barns for the sake of extending the lifespan of Matthew's smile. Ronan himself felt nothing but a deep, grazing sadness everytime he stepped foot into his family property. It was a portrait with several burning holes in it from summer afternoons past and impish dreams of futures that would now never be. It was a ghost house.

Ronan sighed as he clambered out of his BMW and stared up the the identical stone pillars that slept behind curling branches of ivy.

The gravel beneath his feet was hot enough that he could feel it through the soles of his shoes. The tantalizing gaze of the sun today was drenching the Barns in light, turning the mysterious and the forlorn into bright shadows of iridescent colors, splashing reds and greens, the brilliant sap of the oaks glinting, the barks shrouded and coy as ever. 

Sometimes, Ronan didn't feel welcome at his own childhood home. It probably had to do with the fact that his father had made it illegal for him to enter the estate until he was legally an adult, but now that he was eighteen, it still felt wrong, like he was disrupting the wild and sleeping nature of the place. Ronan had made a few trips to

The Barns even before he'd technically been legal, but the hurt never seemed to abate.

Instead, it crumpled and rendered in his gut, like a knife twisted deeper each time.

He kept going, making a beeline for the front door. He avoided looking left or right, he avoided thinking. As he trudged past a thousand echoes of memories he couldn't even recognize anymore, he felt like an outlier, surveying somebody else's past.

When he'd first brought his friends to the Barns, Blue had pointed out that it felt like another country in here, and if the Barns was another country, he was an intruder bristling at its borders. 

As he made his way in, he caught a glimpse of the farmhouse and a shudder went through him. Even though the artificial light that they always left on in the sitting room gleamed, the natural light of the day seemed to mute it. That didn't make him feel any better about it.

One evening, when Niall Lynch had been dreaming in his sitting room, he'd forgotten to turn the light off, and a day after that, he'd been killed.

None of the brothers had managed to work up the nerve to turn off the light their dead father had left on, so it remained like that, perpetual until it eventually went out on its own due to a power outage or a crack in the bulb. As long as it was on, Ronan felt as though his father was still crammed up in there, as though any minute now he would walk out that room and greet his sons.   
  
It was an agonizingly stupid thought. One that made Ronan want to hit something until it gave way, or burn the entire sitting room to the ground, because he did not lie, especially not to himself. The day he began to lie to himself was the day that he would cease to function.

The truth, at this point, was as vital to Ronan Lynch as breathing, eating or sleeping. It was a compulsion rather than a choice.

Ronan stepped into his home and in came the sent of mold and wood varnish, emptiness and dust bunnies. Loneliness crept into his chest and lodged there, a sickening beast lifeless and shrill. It was strange that he still felt lonely. By any means he wasn't exactly a lonely person. Even though he was a little reclusive, he had Matthew, he had Gansey and Blue, maybe even Cheng by an extension.

He even had Declan, even if he was more of a specter that flickered in and out of his life than a constant. He was still his brother and he was alive, which was what mattered. 

Ronan would not let himself think about his parents. It went without saying that he missed them, but it was more than just a dull background ache when he was here. Here, it was amplified times a thousand, atomic bomb levels of clamorous destruction, blocking everything else out but the pain and the turbulent sorrow.

When he closed his eyes, he could picture it all, more lucid than his dreams, more vivid than his reality. Aurora Lynch in the kitchen baking brownies for her children, a daisy chain in her hair, carefully crowned by her youngest son. The sound of her laughter like windchimes in the rain. Niall Lynch sprawled out on the sofa on Sundays he spent home, a newspaper in his lap. The eyes behind his glasses sharp and demanding, as if he was making every printed word dance to his command. Grooming and feeding the multicolored flock of cattle outback with Declan as Matthew dazedly watched and childishly mocked the way the animals would chew.

Ronan sucked in a breath and his eyes flew open. His throat was in flames.

_No_ , he warned himself. _Not right now._  
  
For Matthew. This was all for Matthew.

Perhaps his loneliness had been something ingrained in him ever since he was a child. Despite the halcyon haze of his childhood, one night he'd woken up feeling alone enough that his sugar-addled kid brain had decided to create himself a brother, but Matthew was so real and so pure.

He was more human than Declan or Ronan could ever be. He held the same wanderlust in his eyes that Aurora'd once held in hers before she fell asleep forever.

Matthew was, by all intents and purposes, a miraculous reflection of their mother. After all, these dream things were not like his night horrors, they thrived in sunlight, they were weaved by it. They knew nothing of human turmoil and cruelty. They were happy and free and uncomplicated.  
  
It'd been a difficult task, growing up around dreams and dreamers. He'd never known what was real, how he'd be able to segregate his reality from his subconscious. How he'd be able to live in an unsatisfactory world knowing that he could very well create a world of his own. Multiple, even. The limit was only his own imagination. 

Before he left for Nino's to go catchup with his friends, he lay in the grassfields on his back for a few minutes, shrugging off his leather jacket and drinking up the sun in a pleasant and painful daze. This was why he could never comprehend the value of school, of endless monotonous lessons and elbows jabbing shoulders and GPAs that determined whether you were worthy of being a functioning member of society, not when he was redefining every law of nature.

Not when his own brother's existence was practically impossible. Much to Gansey's sheer horror, all Ronan wanted out of life was this. To spend his days in the jerkwater peace of Henrietta with those he loved, one with the hundred-year locusts and the ball-dancing trees and the mystical kingdom of his father's sleeping treasures. 

He could raise the cattle and repaint the sheds, work his way to reviving all of the sleeping creatures. He'd never have to move away from his hometown. The world was a large place but it was even larger in his head, and there were still dreams he had yet to explore. 

Ronan sighed and closed his eyes against the sun. A light breeze carried through the field surrounding him, making the pastures tickle his skin lightly. The back of his muscle tee was damp with sweat, his hands fisted in the warm earth. It was just as fulfilling as going above 140 mph on a silvery night road, the scent of gasoline and burning metal from the exhaust pipes in the air, his heart carving a hole into his shirt.

This was a different kind of high though, raked with nostalgia and sentiment and reveries.

He'd never felt so alive.

* * *

Ninos’ was perhaps Ronan’s favorite cafe slash pizzaria, not particularly because it had anything to do with the quality of the service or the coffee, which was almost ninety-percent of the time beyond undrinkable thanks to Blue, wanting to spite “you Abercrombie types and your hounds” by addressing everyone by their favorite drink and then botching it up on purpose.

Ronan would never be able to appreciate the American Latte in the same way again, or an Iced Tea, which Blue had once added whipped cream to. The result had been croggy and distasteful.

What Ronan appreciated about Ninos’ was its comely atmosphere.

The timeless feel to it, the ever-lasting scent of freshly grinded coffee beans prickling at his nostrils, the comfy booths.

Ronan had a suspicion that Ninos’ ran pertinently on nostalgia rather than anything else.

He found his friends sitting at their usual booth at the far left, and Blue hovering over them with the same irritable fury reddening her puffy cheeks that he’d taken note of the first time he’d met her. “I swear, I don’t understand why you boys have to make everything into a pissing contest.” Blue stated gruffly, crossing her tiny arms over her chest and sticking her tongue out.

“Come on, Sargent. I worship Madonna way more than Gansey worships Glendower,” came Henry Cheng’s voice. He had that large kind of voice that borrowed space from the room.

“Just because I don’t have a cardboard cutout of a Welsh king in my bedroom,” Gansey snapped, switching from worldly youth to petulant child like a shortcircuiting switchboard.

“Ah, Ganseyman. Richard the bitchard! You _slander_ me. Not only do I have a cardboard cutout of Her Exuberance in my room, but I write detailed slash fiction about us featuring the New Age Plague and a horde of aliens in the distant dystopia that is the year 2080, it’s a classic and has, like, seventy-five hits on Archive of Our Own. Plus, I know every one of her songs by heart in three distinct languages. Ergo, I’m the bigger fan. Ha, I win!”

“Congratulations, you win a subpar cup of coffee,” Blue muttered, pouring him a glass. “Ah, finally. A voice of reason. Ronan!” Blue called, noticing him first.

She was dressed in a white dress with handpainted blue and red birds printed on it, the neckline was a black collar that looked like it had been yanked off a winged tuxedo shirt. The choppy beehive that she liked to call hair was weaved into about a dozen tiny braids.

“Cheng, Gansey. No offense but you’re the only two fuckers in the world who’d find your respective and not to mention borderline insane obsessions remotely brag worthy.” He said, sliding into the seat besides Gansey, who was looking more than a little ashamed.

“Thank you!” Blue said, with a theatrical sigh and a quick twirl.

“They’ve been on like this all morning. It’s almost worse than when Calla and Orla get to arguing about whose kinkier in the bedroom. Urgh. I’m going to have nightmares for days, you know.”

Ronan chuckled dryly, picking up a half-eaten slice of Pepperoni pizza and shoving the whole thing into his mouth.

“Did you buy your brother the flowers like I asked?” Gansey questioned, narrowing his eyes at him, which were a little pink from another sleepless night no doubt. His hair was looking a little mussed for a change, which would’ve been the only giveaway of his weariness to the untrained eye, but Ronan could see the gaping holes in his carefully crafted facade.

The cyan Henley he wore was slightly wrinkled as if he’d slept in it, his shoelaces were hastily tied instead of neatly looped as per usual and his breath smelt mintier. He also kept running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip as he often did when he was extra anxious. Ronan made a mental note to ask him what was the matter afterwards.

“Yes, they’re in the backseat of my car but fuck the flowers. Who cares about flowers? I found something a whole lot more interesting.” He grinned.

Henry cocked an eyebrow. “A life?”

“Shut up, you fuck tank,” he cursed, before breaking into a dark smirk. “I found the Adam to my Steve, like, literally.”

Gansey chuckled. “At Moon’s Flora & Fauna? No way, I mean, Margaret’s a wonderful old lady, I help her with her groceries sometimes and she’s voting for my mother come the election, but I don’t recall her mentioning a son, or even a husband, now that I think about it.”

Blue, who was still standing over the table instead of doing her job, went pale. “You don’t mean Adam Parrish?”

“I didn’t get his last name, but I’m willing to bet a chicken coop that he knew exactly who you are,” Ronan said, tauntingly.

Both Gansey and Cheng looked up to gawk at her questioningly. Blue scratched the back of her neck, a sheepish grin flooding her features. “Oh, what? Like you two don’t have exes?” she sighed, then.

“Adam and I were really close friends, and then we were more than that, for a little while, but things didn’t really work out, we broke up. It was freshmen year. I was weird, he was… nice,” she explained.

Ronan blinked at her. “I’m sorry? Are you under the impression that you’re not still immensely weird, because I’m here to assure you otherwise. In fact, Sargent, I crown you the queen of weird, effective immediately.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Now I’m proud of it, back then, just like everyone else back then, I was insecure about it.”

Blue met Ronan’s eyes. “Sandy hair, very tall, smile that runs up your spine. The hint of a Henrietta accent. That’s the one?”

“A plus on the descriptive essay,”

Blue shrugged off his decisive comment, she was used to his antics by now. “I guess it makes sense that he’s working there. He uh… works a lot. A lot of jobs, I mean. I haven’t spoken to him in awhile, I wanted to stay in touch but I always got the distinct impression that he couldn’t get over what happened between us. Maybe he’s still hurting, or he’s just being a chauvinist pig. I can never tell. You men and your egos,”

"So you have a crush on Blue’s ex-lover? This should be entertaining,” Cheng said.

Ronan shot him a glare of acidic proportions. “What is this, middle school?”

“And who even says ‘lover’ anymore? _Blurgh_.” Blue spat, scrunching up her nose.

“Actually, I think I’ve seen him around school,” Gansey said, contemplatively. “He’s really smart. Ahead of most of our classes, too. A lot of the teachers I’m friends with speak highly of him. I spoke to him personally once, during a flag hoisting session at Aglionby. He didn’t talk very much,”

“Maybe he just didn’t like _you_ very much,” Blue suggested. “He’s not really… like the rest of you,”

Henry chose to take this as an offense, straightening in his seat. “What are you insinuating, Bluebell?”

“First of all, call me Bluebell again and I promise I won’t make out with you for a week. Secondly, all I meant is that he’s from the less fortunate side of town. He busted his ass to get into Aglionby, and you silver-spooned tinsels get to walk in just because of your familial privileges,” she explained, crisply.

"Blue!” someone shouted from behind the counter. “Gotta get back to work. Don’t lose your minds without me.” She muttered, and stomped off.

“I guess that means he’s straight?” Ronan muttered, hoping the dejection didn’t filter through his voice. “Or bi,” Henry offered.

There was something about the boy that had left Ronan rapt with him. He was quiet and beautiful and Ronan felt like every bone in his body ached with the urge to get to know him better. Why did he want to pursue Adam? Because Ronan didn't get along with most people. Everyone he'd met always seemed to be focusing on the wrong things, and he didn't have time for people who went through life like it was a half-baked dream.

He'd stepped through half-baked dreams, they were fuzzy and hysterical and they ended within the blink of an eye. Ronan only cared for people who were more convincing than his dreams, hence Gansey had immediately become his closest friend.

He was a youth-drunk knight on a quest for a dead king. You didn't get more whimsical than Richard Gansey the Third.

And then he'd met Blue Sargent, the human equivalent of a Duracell Ultra double A battery and her family of psychics. And then he'd met Henry Cheng with a pet robotic bee that his father had dreamt up and then there was Cabeswater, salient and ever-shifting, where time was nothing but a stream flowing sideways. 

When Ronan had met Adam, he'd spotted that _something more_ in him that Cheng couldn't ever quite shut up about.

"Well, if he does turn out to be, I guess I get to be the best man at your wedding,” Gansey said, with a grin, pulling Ronan out of his thoughts. “I mean, I did play the proverbial cupid.”

“Aw man,” Ronan groaned, tapping the back of his middle finger against his temple. “Now I’m imagining a fat baby with your face and wings and a sack of heart shaped arrows.”

“I’ve gotta add that proposition to our list of ideas for roleplay night,” Henry said, with a smile that was more innuendo than teeth. He was dressed in a Madonna t-shirt and torn jeans, his hair were ever-spiked and he wore a skull with ruby eyes that stared into Ronan’s very soul around his ring-finger. He looked like a groupie, or the human equivalent of a Rolls-Royce.

“TMI, dude!” Ronan said, scrunching his nose up in disgust. Gansey’s face had taken on the tinge of an overripe tomato as he sunk into his seat like he was hoping it would swallow him whole.

“What? Don’t they make jokes in the purgatory you’re from?” Henry asked, narrowing his gaze.

“I mean, I dug myself into that one,” Ronan acknowledged. “I’ve really gotta do a better job at picking my hells,”

“Let’s just hope this Adam guy isn’t one,” Cheng winked, helpfully.

Ronan slid out of the booth. “And that’s my queue,” he said.

“I’ll uh… walk you out,” Gansey mumbled, shakily following suit.

Ronan was already halfway out of the cafe, he shot Blue a quick salute where she met his eyes from across the room, and she mouthed, ‘talk to him’.

He gave her a soft nod.

As they made their way into the late afternoon light, Gansey kicked at the gravel beneath their feet and Ronan made a beeline for his BMW. The rain had long since stopped, but it was still quite a bit overcast, the sun hidden away behind a flock of clouds. The Nino’s parking lot was spacious and favourable for hushed conversations about fairly salient matters. With only the usual Thursday early-evening crowders around, the cars in the lot were few and far between.

The boys made their way to Ronan’s car and leaned against the hood. Gansey stared down at his hands, cheeks still faintly red. “I apologize for Henry’s… _tenacity_ ,”

Ronan shot his friend a pointed look. “Gansey, it’s me for fuck’s sake. And anyway, it’s not Henry who offends me, it’s that constipated ass look on your face. What’s going on? More dead ends on the Glendower front?” he asked.

“I’m treading on thin ice here and my bravado’s beginning to hinder. With the quest, with Blue and Henry… Just everything. I feel like if I keep stumbling around blind I’m bound to hit a stone or two, at some point, my luck will run out and it’ll all be over.”

Ronan scoffed. “Gansey, bud, amigo. Has anyone ever told you that you overwork that fucking nightmare factory brain of yours?”

“I thought yours was the nightmare factory,” Gansey said, quietly, glance between his shoes.

“Indulge me this once, Dick,” he replied, smoothly.

Gansey shoved at his arm, a helpless smile humbling his wholesome face. “Don’t you have a poor florist whose somehow had the misfortune of crossing paths with you to go harass?”

Ronan curled his lip, breaking into a derisive laugh. “Don’t you have an orgy with a girl who I could crush between the palm of my hand and a guy with a fucking bee fetish to arrange?”

“Ha ha,” Gansey snorted dryly. “Look who’s playing the advocate of bad life choices,”

“Can’t appease the devil all of the time,” Ronan muttered, shooting his friend what could only be described as half a grin and half a scowl.

“Stay at home tonight. I have about three Welsh texts to translate and a building has toppled in my patchwork town of Henrietta. The citizens are concerned. It’s going to be another long night,” Gansey said, already turning on his heel to head back into Nino’s.

Ronan made an obscene two-fingered gesture. “Don’t forget to bring the OJ,” he called to the back of Gansey’s well-ironed shirt as he slid into his car and sped off in a storm of dust.

* * *

 It was another grey afternoon in Henrietta. Adam was spraying the bouquets fresh with water when he heard the rustling of gravel and an engine loud as a siren whirring elatedly outside the shop. The car’s shadow ran across the length of the room like a ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, Noah hadn’t shown up yet, although Adam had noticed that he did that sometimes. Disappearing for hours on end before popping back up again and pretending like no time had passed. It unsettled him, but he knew it wasn’t in the poor boy’s control. Sometimes Adam wished to help, if he only knew how.

Noah would shank away or make a morbid joke or flat out refuse every single time he broached the subject though, and he wasn’t foolish enough to try and save someone who didn’t want to be saved. Adam paid no heat to the shoddy show the driver was making outside. Aglionby boys did it all the time, it was supposed to be a testament to one’s virility and power. The louder your lavish car, the louder your own lionly roar.

Most Raven boys thought with their genitals rather than with their actual brains, peanut-sized as they were, and it infuriated Adam.

“Adam!” someone called, voice as rich as honey.

Instantly, Adam’s stomach dropped. It was that menace from yesterday, Death Metal Boy- _er_ , Ronan Lynch. Once again, he strolled into the room like he was conquering every corner of it. The flowers seemed to leap against his quixotic presence. Adam’s mouth tasted sour. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmured, under his breath.

Ronan broke into a smile like a scalpel. He was dressed pretty much like yesterday, in torn black jeans, a space grey muscle tee and a leather jacket. He smelt, again, like gasoline and cologne. “Let’s go! We haven’t got all day,” he said, with a quick gesture of the hand.

Adam bit down on his lower lip, studying the boy with perplexity. _What a strange animal Ronan Lynch was._

“Go where exactly?”

“Fuck if I know,” he replied, with a shrug. “Anywhere. Everywhere. The outskirts of Henrietta. Maybe up the mountains.”

“Do I look like I’ve got hours to spare?” Adam snapped, cocking an eyebrow. He had to appreciate the guy’s confidence, if nothing else. Ronan gestured around the empty shop. “Looks like you’ve got some time to kill to me,”

“I can’t, I have another shift at 5.”

“And it’s 3.30. Don’t worry, I’ll drop you back to your pumpkin carriage.”

“Seriously, I don’t even know you,” “Nor I you. Are we just spouting facts here? Come on,” he urged, making a clicking noise with his tongue.

“No,” Adam shook his head, with a dry laugh. “No, there’s absolutely no way.”

“I’ll buy more flowers if you come ride with me.”

“That’s actually insulting,” Ronan’s grin dropped and he sighed.

“Okay, okay. When do you get off work?” Adam considered this. “At like 9?”

“I’ll see you then?” his eyes were portals to another dimension, the expression on his face implicating he was engrossed in diabolic thoughts. “I’m usually really tired by then…” he protested.

“Jesus, do you play hard to get.”

“I’m not playing at all.”

“Come on, Adam. Nine ‘o clock? Just for half an hour? It’ll be like a dream.”

“What do you wanna do?”

“Bury a couple bodies, maybe set a government building on fire…”

Adam remained unamused. Ronan sighed. “Just hang out? Or is that against some law?”

Adam sighed, he couldn’t refuse that persistent gleam on his face. He mustered a curt nod. “Alright. Half an hour only.”

“Where do I pick you up?” Suddenly, Adam felt overtly self-conscious about his bite-sized apartment above the church office. There was no way he was calling Ronan there. Plus, what if he turned out to be some kind of stalker?

“Here’s fine,” It was Ronan’s turn to raise a judgemental eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking great. See you when I see you.”

Once he was gone, Adam felt like a peach pit was jammed inside his throat. Questions pincered at him. Why was he so keen on getting to know one another? Where did he get that flame in his eyes? What in god’s name had Adam just gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd imagine that ronan has no clue how to be subtle or how to pursue someone when he likes them so he comes off a little bit eccentric and whimsy and maybe even slightly patronizing, but that's all because my bby is just hopelessly Bad At Feelings™ so we forgive him.
> 
> this chapter's song title is derived from comatose by stumbleine, its this dreamy, melancholic tune that's mostly an indie electronica but its just very daydreamy and it was what i was listening to while i wrote the part about ronan at the barns. 
> 
> please don't hesitate to leave a comment, even if its just one sentence long i will eat it up with tons of gratitude!
> 
> come yell at me on [tumblr.](winterblues.tumblr.com)


	3. Like Real People Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been trying to keep these updates coming pretty quick so i hope you guys will comment and reward me for my diligence x). also, once again, thank you to everyone giving this story so much love i'm forever grateful & i'm really happy about the avid response i've gotten so far. if you have any questions/suggestions or just wanna talk, don't hesitate to message me on my [tumblr](winterblues.tumblr). okay, i guess that's all. enjoy. :)
> 
>  
> 
> _I will not ask you where you came from  
>  I will not ask you and neither should you._
> 
> _Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips  
>  we should just kiss like real people do._

* * *

 Ronan was parked by ‘Moon’s Flora & Fauna’ just like he’d promised.

It was almost 9.20 pm and Adam was still a no show. Instantly, Ronan’s stomach sank. Had it been a mistake? Had he come on too strong? That was it, wasn’t it? He’d practically bullied Adam into going out with him.

The night was surprisingly warm, the last chill in the air washed away by the heated persistence of rain. Everything smelt like wet asphalt and reborn trees. The sky was a dusty dark grey, Ronan’s mood matched it. He was growing increasingly impatient as he chewed at his leather bands in nervous anticipation.

Chainsaw cawed in annoyance, her talons sniping at his dashboard. “Don’t you scratch an inch of my car,” he said, a warning note in his voice. The corvid merely ruffled her feathers in response, immune to humanly qualms. Ronan sighed, checking the time once more.

He hadn’t really been thinking when he’d decided to go and fucking - do this. Whatever it was that he was doing.

Running after someone who clearly didn’t enjoy being tailed, who’d only agreed to meet with him because he’d heavily insisted upon it.

This was fucking ridiculous. In fact, this was a whole new low.

He groaned, adjusting his seat so that he could lean all the way back, taking his hands off the steering wheel and running them over his head instead, before grabbing a lighter that he kept snuggled in the left hand compartment for times exactly like these and watching the flames come aglow, drenching the car in a thin aureate aura, before diminishing. He continued to fiddle with the lighter. Flicking it on and off. Adam still wasn’t there.

_Maybe I should go. Yes. I should fucking go._

Gansey would be waiting on him anyway, and he’d promised he wouldn’t be too long. Now it was getting dangerously close to that half-an-hour mark. He ran his hands over his denims, tossing the lighter back into the compartment without bothering to close it back up.

Chainsaw began to screech and croak frantically, indicating to him that she wanted to be let out. Ronan rolled down the window on his side and the raven flew right out. He wasn’t worried where she would go. All living things needed their space. She knew where home was, she’d find him when she needed him. _Man_ , he thought. _If only people were as easy as dream birds._

Just as he’d set his seat upright so that he could head back, he heard a soft knock on the opposite window. Ronan’s head whipped up. A tall, lean silhouette stood hunched by the car, peering in. Adam. Ronan’s stomach began crowding with elephants.

He took a deep breath and decided to play it cool as he quickly, cautiously, flipped the ajar compartment back up and undid the locks on either of the doors, before leaning in and opening the door for him so that he could jump shotgun. Adam clambered aboard, smelling like soap and forest and _boy_.

Ronan watched him from his peripheral as he settled into the seat, trying to comfortably adjust his long legs. “Hey,” Adam said then, quietly.

Ronan turned the key in the ignition and the engine whirred to life, hopefully drowning out the sound of Ronan’s heart floundering in his chest. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had to take on an extra hour at work.” He explained. “I’m uh… a little surprised you’re still here, actually.”

Ronan feigned nonchalance as he stomped on the gas pedal. “It’s not like I ever do anything on time anyway,” he said. It was a lie, albeit a little white one. Ronan usually prided himself on his honesty, but a quick cover-up to bandage his ego once and awhile couldn’t hurt. Ronan was in fact, pretty fucking punctual. It was another thing he prided himself upon.

As they took off, Ronan realized the strange effect this boy had on him. If he’d felt compelled to lie within the first two days of knowing Adam, surely this couldn’t end well. And yet, everytime he caught sight of him in the rear view mirror, something in his chest would lurch. Even if this was awful and Adam was clearly uneasy and Ronan wasn’t sure where they were going.

“You hungry?” he asked, staring straight ahead, tail lights reflecting in his eyes. They reflected in Adam’s too, morphing slivers of red and silver with the captivating blue of his eyes. “Nah,” Adam shook his head.

The silence that followed made him feel claustrophobic, which in turn helped him decide where he would take Adam, whose eyes remained glued to the whirring world outside. “So,” he finally said. “Where are you taking me? Not for a sacrifice, I hope,” he muttered, gesturing at the full moon that sat plump and lurid above them, the rainclouds having cleared considerably. “It’s just past the outskirts of town,” Ronan replied. “Up the mountains.”

Adam narrowed his eyes. “That’ll take us another twenty-minutes at least.”

“Is there somewhere you have to be?”

“I guess not.”

“What’s the rush then?”

“Well, I hate to point out the obvious here but you are a practical stranger who’s taking me away from civilization in his conveniently dark vehicle. Even your windows are tinted.”

“It’s only kidnapping when you don’t have the other person’s consent, Parrish.”

“How’d you know my last name?”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t use satanic means. It was on the top of that register you made me fill.”

Adam was quiet a moment. “Well, just in case you _are_ planning to brutally murder me, I want you to know that I took a picture of your license plate and sent it to a friend.”

“Proactive thinking,” Ronan replied, with an appreciative nod. “That’s attractive.”

“So is the prospect of my death by your hands.” Ronan couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. With his jaw straight like that and his expression deadpan.

Needlessly, he felt a shiver flitter down his spine. “Or vica versa,” he muttered softly, to himself.

They made the rest of the ride in silence as the BMW clambered up steep mountain roads, everything reduced to dark shifty shadows against the blind eyes of the night. They drove past the rusty Welcome to Henrietta sign and Nino’s and the auto-repair shop where Adam worked until the town was nothing but a bright blip in the distance beneath them.

“Why tattooing?” Adam asked, out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

Adam shrugged. “You’re obviously an artist of some sort. Half of your clientele request to be tattooed by you, I see that you’re an admirer of the arts and seem to know a fair share about Renaissance painters; and that tattoo you have -” he said, eyes sliding over the nape of Ronan’s neck. “Is it an original design?”

For some reason, Adam asking about Ronan’s tattoo made heat stir in his stomach, and then he couldn’t get the thought of letting Adam run his hands all over it out of his mind. When they’d first met, the boy’s exquisitely beautiful hands hadn’t escaped his notice. Those long, pianist’s fingers, the deep callouses mitigating a life of hard work and hustling, the boyish curve of his thumbs, the aureole outlines of his fingers.

Ronan wanted to paint hands like those and hang their portrait up in the Louvre. He wanted to paint the warm enchanting azure of his eyes but he wasn’t sure he’d ever find the right shade to match. It was a strange notion, his treasuring of this, as Adam so aptly put it, ‘practical stranger’.

“Yeah,” Ronan replied, eyes still trained on the road in fear he’d look at Adam one more time and drive them straight off the pinnacle. “It’s mine, and to answer your question, I don’t really know. My brother came up with the idea and I just sort of went along with it. Plus, the extra bucks don’t hurt.” He spent a lot of the extra bucks on drag racing and alcohol, but he wasn’t about to tell Adam that.

Something told him Adam wouldn’t respect it - and the mere thought of the other boy disapproving of something he did or of something that he was; didn’t sit right with Ronan.

They reached their destination and Ronan made a big show of uprooting the gravel beneath the hot rubber of his tires as the car skidded to a stop.

“Was that necessary?”

“As life,” Ronan grinned darkly.

“What is this place?” Adam asked, but Ronan was already halfway out of the car. “It’s called Hawk Point. Not particularly because of any sort of upsurge in predatory birds, but because you have a bird’s eye view of the whole town. It’s also pretty isolated at night because dullards like to come here to watch the fancy nancy sunset.”

He said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he took a deep breath of the lucid night air. “I happen to think the spot is at it’s best during the night.”

Adam got out of the car, gently shutting the door and gaping in awe at the view, which was spectacular.

The Point itself was merely a cliff junction in the heart of whorling mountain roads, a small secured place in between the in-betweens. If you strolled up towards the edge of it, a thousand glistering lights tiny as dancing fireflies were encircled in the kernel of high-rise ridges. Standing like massive blue-black bruises in the dark, uprooted to form a serene hammock.

Here, the wind was clear as water and smoke was replaced by fog.

It had that soft Virginia grace to it, one that Ronan adored.

The sky above them was a starry portal, as by now the majority of the billows had headed west.

Ronan had found this place on a particularly furious night drive about a month after his father had passed away and found that it was a Shangri-La of sorts. An escape from the chaos that regularly thrummed in his veins, in the shrill, perturbed voice of his older brother and the welted weeping of his mother and the standard sounds of Henrietta, cars and birds and the white noise on the radio.

Here, it was just crickets and his breathing and the wind.

Here, everything was lighter than the incessant fluttering of his winged demons.

He’d never shared this little spot with anyone. He hadn’t even been here with Gansey. It was a place he preferred to venture to alone, and yet, here he was, with a beautiful stranger in toe.

_What the fuck am I doing?_ he thought, as Adam trudged up behind him. “It’s… beautiful,”  
  
Ronan broke into a wicked smile. “You wanna know what’s the best part?” he said. “Nobody can hear you scream up here, and the mountains echo your words back to you if you’re loud enough. So if I was going to kill you, it would be the perfect place to do it.”  
  
“I don’t feel the need to be loud,” Adam said, something dark taking over his pale features.

Ronan decided not to linger on that and plopped down right there on the dirt. A minute later, Adam joined him, dusting his hands off on his jeans.

The silence in between them was warm, almost tangible. When Adam broke it, he was looking at Ronan with calculating eyes. “You do go to Aglionby, don’t you?”

Ronan shrugged. “Unfortunately.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I don’t see the point of it. It’s hard for me to grow fond of anything I can’t peg a basis into.”

Adam tilted his head back, but his eyes were still trained on Ronan. He could feel the weight of them digging into his skin like pinpricks.

“It’s the best school for boys in Henrietta,” he said.

“It’s a school for entitled pricks and the illegitimate sons of the uppercrust.”

“But you fit right in,” Adam didn’t say it in a rude way, even if there was an underlying accusation in his voice. He was merely making judgements based on ocular evidence.

Ronan pinned Adam’s gaze down and held it there. “Yeah I’m practically the poster child for parental advisory content I get that,” he muttered. “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Keeping Up Appearances?’” but he spoke before Adam could answer. “There’s more to everything than what meets the eye, but I guess you wouldn’t know about that if you’re this quick to judge.”

"I'm just cautious," Adam said, tightly.  
  
"Maybe you should consider letting loose sometime." Ronan prescribed. "Seriously, why do you think I'm here with you?"

Adam reproached with a withering look. “Maybe it's charity night and you're looking for a pet project.”

Ronan snorted, wishing he’d bought along with him a sixpack or an urban whiskey. “Look man. I can drop your ass right back to your little flower shop if that’s what you want. I took you out here because I thought we could be friends, but I’m not obligated to meet your hostility with tolerance.”

Adam sighed and looked away, biting at his bottom lip. “I’m sorry,” he mustered. “I’ve had an exhausting day.”

Ronan shot the other boy a disapproving scowl but said nothing, leaning over and looping an arm behind his head so that he could lay down and stare at the stars instead of the city lights, which were beginning to softly dizzy him.

To his surprise, Adam followed suit, letting out a languid breath as if he’d been holding it for awhile.

Their arms were in dangerous grazing distance from one another, and Ronan felt his skin crawl from that almost-but-not-quite there touch. There were things he was already gathering about Adam.

Right off the bat, it was pretty goddamn obvious that he didn’t hold himself in high regard. Almost like he felt an undeterred need to lash out on people, to be unapologetically blunt, but not in the way that Ronan was - all fervid and sore from being too nice for too long until life finally dragged him by his heels and squeezed the naivety from his lungs - but in some sort of half-hearted effort to make people dislike him on purpose.

The second thing he’d gauged about the boy was that he was impossibly wary about every step he ever made in life. While Ronan often didn’t think twice about where he was going or what he was doing, Adam probably had a heavily articulated map in his head about about where he currently stood and where he wanted to go. He never made any decision in vain, and probably had the rest of his life plotted out in the fraying pages of an old journal somewhere.

It was also clear to Ronan that he was financially in some deep shit. Ronan wasn’t stupid, anyone who worked at some little flower shop down the block that barely saw any financial stimulance wasn’t going to be particularly well-to-do, but he had a feeling that Adam was worse for wear than he’d initially assumed, and clearly carried resentful feelings about the bulk of the silver-spooned populace of Henrietta, always multiplying, like bedbugs.

None of these things really changed his mind about pursuing the boy. It just made him understand him a whole lot better.

Adam was a conundrum and this was the kind of math that Ronan would happily attempt to evaluate.

* * *

There was something about the quiet of it all. It was soft, pliable, something he could hold between his hands and mold in whichever shape he liked.

Adam had almost forgotten what it was like to be quiet when all his life he’d been surrounded by loud creatures, whether it was his father’s loud beatings or his mother’s loud chastising or his own loud heartbeat gurgling in his chest. Being lost up here in the mountains with somebody he barely knew turned out to be weirdly just what he’d needed somehow. Ronan was as unpredictable as they came, but he was real. He was so real that it was a little painful to look directly at him. Adam couldn't remember the last time he'd met anyone who came off like that. 

He sighed contentedly, watching the stable stars twinkle behind ringlets of sparse clouds. They were pretty much dead and yet so unbelievably bright. Hope stirred in his chest like a song, like a warning. He didn’t want to stop feeling this way.

Adam felt like he was going to fall asleep here under the night breeze, until suddenly, he felt all too awake.

He watched from the corner of his eye as Ronan trailed his fingers down Adam’s right arm with his left. It was a ghost of a touch, like grass tickling your feet, but Adam felt fires rise in the pit of his stomach. Ronan wasn’t talking, but he wore an expression that was dark and intense as a black hole. Adam should have stopped him, he didn’t. He allowed Ronan to continue this soft soundless touching for a while before he involuntarily flinched, chills erupting on his skin.

Ronan took his hand away, reverting to his previous position.

Adam desperately wanted for him to continue, but he wasn’t going to be able to form the words to get him to do it, so he relented despite his disappointment.  
  
"I should have known better than to touch the evening flower," Ronan said, in Latin, quoting a Latin poet Adam was surprised Ronan even knew existed. Adam stared at him for a long time before replying, in Latin. "I am not a flower."   
  
Ronan's mouth dropped open. "You..." he mustered, in English. 

"I speak Latin." 

Ronan pursed his lips. "Any other nifty talents you have that I should know about?" he asked, switching back to Latin.  
  
Before Adam could reply, something vibrated between them and heat rushed to Adam’s cheeks. Ronan sighed and began to stand up. “That’s the Gansey drill,” he explained. “I’ve got to go. Come on. I’ll drop you home.” Adam nodded and followed him back to his car.

_What a strange night_ , he thought to himself, but it was the first time in a long time that he’d felt anything at all.


	4. Promise Me This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is very long but hey, i'll keep with the updates and y'all keep with the commenting, okay? :)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Stitch by stitch I tear apart.  
>  If brokenness is a form of art,  
> I must be a poster child prodigy._

* * *

“I have a date! I have a date! I have a date!” Matthew crooned, in a shrill sing-song voice.

“Can you quit your demonic screeching? I’m pretty sure all of Henrietta is shaking beneath our feet.” Ronan muttered, where he was sprawled on his desk chair, his feet up on an identical chair and his hands flying across the soft paper of his sketchpad. The familiar itch to get what he’d dreamt the night before out of his head and poured out on paper had been bugging the hell out of him all day.

Chainsaw, his pet raven, was perched on his shoulder, her talons sinking into his skin.

Matthew’s squealing only got louder as he flounced around the tattoo parlor like a chicken with its head cut off, despite the death glares Ronan kept sending his brother’s way, he couldn’t help but feel warmth rise in his chest at the kid's impish excitement. He was happy for his little brother, primarily because just like Chainsaw, he’d pulled Matthew out of his dreams. Not that he’d told anyone. This was a secret he kept buried so deep down it wasn’t even available to Gansey.

He was tired of feeling guilty about it, he’d been a stupid lonely kid and Declan had never been a satisfactory excuse for a brother. Not even back then, he supposed. Ronan had spent the rest of his miserable life being afraid for Matthew, he hadn't been sure how human he would turn out to be. To his grand relief, Matthew was far too human. He was the purest thing Ronan had ever created.

“Who’s the lucky brat?” Ronan asked, finally. “His name’s Ash and he has dark hair and the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen!” Matthew said, giddily, just as Declan walked in and snarled in Ronan’s direction.

“Oh, is it Bring Your Pet To Work Day already?” he snapped, derisively.

“Everyday’s Bring Your Pet To Work Day,” Matthew supplied, happily.

Ronan clicked his tongue at his brother. “Why don’t you go stick your dick in Ashley instead of prodding around in my tattoo parlor?”

Declan narrowed his eyes. “ _Your_ tattoo parlor? You show up for work as you please, you bring birds into the store, and how many clients have you chased away when you’re having a bad day? While I’m the one handling our finances and keeping this joint intact. If it was up to you we’d be in flames right now.”

Ronan scoffed loudly. “Will you ever quit it with that holier-than-thou crap of yours? Seriously, what’s it like being so far up your own ass?”

Declan’s eyes flashed with anger as he advanced. “I’ll show you what -”

“Guess what, guess what, Declan! I have a date for the school dance,” Matthew interjected, his blue eyes gleaming as he attempted to get his brother’s attention.

“That’s cool, kiddo,” Declan said as he sobered. He was clearly exasperated, his fatigue written all over the dark contrasting lines of his face.

Matthew’s shoulders sunk. “What will it take to keep you two from fighting so much?” he said, sounding droopy all of a sudden, all his glee dissolving out. “Can’t you guys ever just be happy for me without wanting to tear each other apart?”

When neither of the older brothers responded, the youngest Lynch sighed and turned on his heel. “I’m taking an early lunch break,” he said. “I’ll see you guys later.”  
  
Once Matthew had left, Ronan shot Declan a look that could burn a hole through carbonite. “Now you hurt Matthew’s feelings. Great job, Brother of The Year."

Declan simply shook his head, a crease appearing in between his eyebrows. “Ronan, for once in your life, take equal responsibility for something. We’re both messing up. What happened to getting along for Matthew’s sake?”

Ronan didn’t have an answer but his heart plummeted when he thought about the bruised expression on his little brother’s face. He had to try harder and he knew it. There was a time when Declan’s words would’ve just instigated Ronan further, a time when he’d probably run his fist clean through the older boy’s face. Now, he reminded himself to be rational, calmer, softer in his approach.

Everyday, he had a little bit of the fight drained out of him.

So he sighed, his grip on his pencil tightening as he shaded the paper with dark, vapid strokes, the sharp maw of the pencil leaving indentations on the thin sheets.  
  
“Maybe we’ll never get along,” Ronan said, quietly.  
  
Declan ran a hand through his hair before pulling up a chair in front of Ronan. “We used to, you know,” he said. “Back before you weren’t such a little fucker all the time.”

Ronan arched an eyebrow but didn’t look up from his sketch.

“Ronan,” the way the name rolled off his lips, all pointed concern and charisma, reminded him so painfully of his father that something inside his gut snapped. “Dad would have wanted for us to try harder and,” he paused to swallow, “with mom gone too… All we have is each other.”

“It’s a good thing they aren’t alive to see us, then.” Ronan said, but his words were heatless.

“Don’t be a bitch, lil bro,” he said. “You know I’m trying my best.”

Ronan quit scribbling to meet his brother’s eyes. “And what makes you think I’m not?” he asked, chin jutting out like the sharp branch of an olive tree as he dared his brother to defy his claim. “Just this! This utter disregard for anything or anyone. The heedlessness, your lack of ambition-”

Ronan cut him off. “I have ambitions,”

“Oh yeah,” Declan sounded like he doubted that. “Do share with the class.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and went back to drawing.

He couldn’t tell his brother that he wanted to spend his life at the Barns, on his father’s farm with his dreamt creatures and his friends by his side. He couldn't tell his brother that he didn't even have the slightest interest in his father's business or profiting from his dreams. Declan was a man of degrees framed on the walls and black-tie parties. He would never understand.

It made sense to Ronan though, he could continue to do what he loved, he’d have the tattoo parlor and the suburban daydream that was this town, he had the money and the means. It would be a life of warmth and quiet instead of the chaos he’d spent the last eighteen years of his life spiralling in. He could rally the cattle and create a mud ramp for cars and refurbish every wall. He could throw himself into making their home a home again.

Declan shot his brother a look of disappointment so heated Ronan could feel it charring his lungs to crisps. Declan then pressed a finger to his temple and slid off the chair, which creaked timidly beneath his shifting weight.

“Man, I need an aspirin,” he mumbled, sauntering off. “We’ll talk again when your age actually reflects your maturity,” he called out to Ronan. “Or when I’m turning in my grave,” he muttered silently, to himself.

Once Declan too had left, Ronan was left alone in the tattoo parlor with his sketchpad and his thoughts, even Chainsaw had flown off in favor of bluer skies. Ronan resumed working on his sketch, his heart breaking with every brutal push of the pencil.

He spent all evening at the parlor in disorganized absorption. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. The tip of his tongue poked out of his lips as he pressed the graphite onto the paper and drew the delicate arches of the creature from his dreams.

The strand of bells abruptly clanked against the glass door. Ronan didn’t bother to look up, knowing one of his siblings had returned. He didn’t have it in him right now to start another pointless argument with Declan that would undoubtedly end in double-edged words and blood.

If it was Matthew however, he had to apologize. For the sake of his own fucking battered conscience, if nothing else. Matthew was the last person on the planet he’d ever intend to hurt, and yet he’d gone ahead and hurt him anyway.

Gansey sometimes said that his words were weapons and he’d come unequipped to disarm them, Ronan didn’t usually fall for that sort of theatrical self-pitying rubbish, but perhaps he finally understood where Gansey was coming from.

When he looked up however, his stomach clenched.

It wasn’t Matthew or Declan.

It was Adam Parrish.

“Uh, hey,” he said, in a quiet voice, as pushed his hands into his pockets. “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

Ronan was rendered so stunned he could barely move.

Adam looked so out of place in the bulbous darkness and the glowing lights of his tattoo parlor. He was lean and dusty and so uncertain of if he belonged. It was obvious that he was aware that he didn’t exactly blend in with the place, but he was here anyway. That’s what counted.

Ronan hadn’t been sure if Adam would ever want to see him again after that night three days ago when he’d absentmindedly started to run his fingers across the other boy’s skin. Adam had winced and Ronan’s heart had almost stopped beating. He’d realized that maybe he’d crossed a line and that there was no coming back from that.

So Ronan hadn’t visited his flower shop since then, deciding to give him the space he needed, even though a part of him was pretty convinced Adam would never want to be within grazing distance of him again. And yet here he was. In Ronan’s shop.

“Nah,” he finally said, hoping his flippant tone of voice would veil his surprise as he flipped his sketchbook shut and tossed it on the cluttered table by his side. “What’s up?” he asked.

Adam remained frozen in the shadows. His face was practically a mirage in the rainbow lights that illuminated the phosphorescent atmosphere of the parlor.

“I like what you've done with the place,” Adam said, in lieu of an answer. “Very aesthetic.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he muttered. “Some customers swear it makes their eyes bleed.” Ronan leaned back a little further in his chair, hoping he looked cooler than he felt, as he crossed his arms over his chest.

He was shirtless, and he could tell by the way Adam’s eyes had raked him from head to toe that this fact had not gone unnoticed. Usually, Ronan couldn’t care less about roaming around half-naked, but Adam’s vigilant presence made him insecure, closed off. He couldn’t help but wonder if Adam liked what he saw.

“We’re closed today,” Ronan spoke, just because the awkwardness was killing him.

“It’s a Sunday,” Adam nodded, “but you left the door open to anyone’s disposal.”

“It was for my benefit,” Ronan replied. “I’m in here sometimes past hours and my brother’s too much an asshole to leave me the keys. He comes in and locks up himself.”

Adam nodded once more, before taking a few more uneasy steps into the room.

“So I’m just going to cut straight to it,” he said, with a sigh, whatever mental debate he was having clearly coming to an end.

“I want a tattoo.”

Ronan felt like he was standing in a dream.

* * *

He would berate himself later. He’d already made up his mind for now.  
  
Adam had never considered himself the kind of person to get inked, and for the most part he wasn’t. What he wanted was something that wouldn’t be too big or too small, and on skin that was not regularly exposed. He’d spent the past two nights running the thought over and over in his head and he kept falling into the arms of the same conclusion.

This was something he _needed_.   
  
Ronan’s eyebrows shot up instantly. “Are you sure?”  
  
It was a good question, albeit a pointless one.  
  
Adam had found that once he’d set his mind to something, he wouldn’t quite budge until he’d followed through with it.

He shook his head yes.  
  
“Would you be willing to make an exception for me?” Adam muttered. “Or should I book an appointment and come back later?”  
  
Ronan drummed his knuckles over his mostly shaven head as he shot out of his chair and stretched a little. Adam feigned his eyes to keep from staring at the taut muscles of his arms, the curves of his chest, the smooth lines of his stomach. When he brought his chin up again, Ronan had closed the distance between them. He smelt vaguely like alcohol, Adam didn’t ask. His eyes were earthshakers, but Adam felt pinned in place.  
  
A ghost of a smile lingered at the other boy’s lips. “I’m _always_ willing to make an exception for a passionate customer,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. You really do want this, don’t you?”  
  
“Yes.” Adam swallowed. “I need this, it’s important to me.”  
  
Ronan leaned in a little too close for comfort, close enough so that Adam could feel his cool breath against his lips. Once again, his skin seemed to respond to this proximity and he felt chills flicker up and down his spine.

Ronan’s blue eyes looked almost gray in the warping darkness of the tattoo parlor, washing the pigment of sky out of his irises.  
  
Adam’s heart was a siren blinking in sharp reds and blues.  
  
“Why?” he asked.  
  
“I’m sorry?” Adam mustered.  
  
Ronan shrugged, pulling away, so that there was distance between them once again. “I asked you _why_ . Everyone’s got a reason. Yours is curiously solid. So come on, tell me why you randomly decided that you want a tattoo.”  
  
“Does this come with your regular package?” Adam berated. “Why does it matter why I want it? Isn’t your job basically to give me what I want?”  
  
Ronan’s lower lip curled at that and Adam went over the statement in his head before wincing.  
  
“Okay, I didn’t hear that until I said it, but you get what I mean.”  
  
“Fine,” Ronan said, relenting. Adam felt like he’d dodged a bullet. “What do you want, Adam?”  
  
It was a question he’d asked himself countless times.  
  
_What do you want, Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open._  
  
“Can you give me one of your original designs?” Adam asked, much to Ronan’s surprise.  
  
“You don’t know what you want?”  
  
“Your card,” Adam said, “I skimmed through it and it guarantees that you offer your clients a bonus. You help people figure out what it is that they want on their bodies, apparently that’s how good you are. Is the service a scam?”  
  
Ronan smirked. “That would be questioning my artistic abilities so… Not one bit.”  
  
“Good,” Adam said. “How much is it gonna cost me?”  
  
Adam was willing to pay whatever it was, only because it felt immensely important. It was this unquenchable sensation in his gut of emptiness, of incompleteness, that he felt could only be curbed getting this tattoo.

It was something that he never would've considered if he hadn't met Ronan Lynch, but now that he'd got the idea in his head, he couldn't quite get rid of it.

He’d also recently gotten his end-of-the-month salary from all three of the jobs he worked, so after doing the math in his head and checking The Snake Pit’s starting prices online, he figured he would still have enough money to filter into his savings’ account without too much of a hiccup, and he’d make sure to double his effort for the coming months to close up the hole that it would leave in his wallet.  
  
“For you?” Ronan asked. “Free of charge.”  
  
“That doesn’t feel right. I’d like to pay.” He insisted.  
  
Ronan scrutinized him for a moment, before nodding. “Alright, but you still get the friends and family discount.”  
  
Once they’d worked over a price that satisfied both of the boys, Ronan sat Adam down in one of the private seats meant to look like a chamber of the heart. The LED lighting and the matching plush sofas made Adam a little delirious.

“I need to think,” Ronan said, as he began to pace the length of the room. “Have you made up your mind on the size?”  
  
Adam nodded. “Not too big but not too small.”  
  
Ronan stopped pacing, an expression Adam couldn’t quite gauge spreading over his sharp twisting features. “Where do you want it? Do you have somewhere in mind?”  
  
Adam’s stomach did a somersault, but this was more important than his diffidence.  
  
“I uh… want it along my left side,” he said, lightly running a hand over the side of his torso.  
  
Ronan gave him a quick nod and said nothing. As he paced, Adam could feel his laser eyes skimming him before skippering away and then back again. Five minutes passed by. Then ten, then twelve. Just before they were to hit the fifteen minute mark, Ronan’s eyes dazzled with determination, there was something fervid in the way he looked at Adam just then, something that made Adam want to melt under his hawk-like gaze.  
  
“I’ve got it.” Ronan said, lips brimming with ideas unspoken.  
  
“Show me.” Adam said, heart pounding.

* * *

At first, part of him didn’t like the thought of any ink marring that warm pale skin of his, but he was certainly willing to look past that if receiving this tattoo was that important to Adam.  
  
Ronan thought that it somehow strangely made sense that Ronan would be the one to grant him his tattoo. Even before Adam had trusted him enough to pick one of his original designs, Ronan would’ve given him whatever he’d asked for.

Ronan walked over to his paper supply, grabbed a sheet of plain, carbon and transfer paper from the tops of the piles and crashed back down on his desk. He worked at it like the sea against the gust of the winds, furious and curling like a force of nature. His fingers danced across the page, giving slow birth to something he’d seen in his dreams. Something beautiful.  
  
His free hand waved towards Adam, motioning him to come see what he was working on. Adam walked over to the front of the desk and propped his arms on the ledge, keeping a cautious distance from him as he watched him work.

Adam said nothing and Ronan’s pencil continued to move feverishly across the paper, adding curves and erasing lines as the dreamt thing emerged. Adam’s stare prickled at his skin as he watched him work. Ronan’s thoughts grew self-conscious, desperate to make the design a thousand leagues better than how he imagined it in his head.  
  
When he was finally finished, he stood back and waited for judgement, crossing his fingers behind his back, a lame habit he’d never been able to grow out of.  
  
Adam drew his eyebrows together but didn’t speak.  
  
“Do you like it?” he said, the silence eating away at him.  
  
When Adam looked up at Ronan, the cadence of his voice had changed. “It’s… perfect.”  
  
Ronan heaved a sigh of relief, his heart collapsing into his gut.  
  
Adam broke into a small smile. “It’s really… It’s impressive. I won't lie, I'm a little speechless.”  
  
“Of course it fucking is,” Ronan muttered, despite himself. “We’re the best at what we do for a reason.”  
  
Ronan immediately began to trace the sketch on the carbon paper, making sure it was positioned ink-side down so that the image would catch on the transfer paper. He was insanely impatient to begin tattooing Adam.

“Is that… claws and a beak I’m seeing?” Adam asked in Latin, now having an unrestrained view of Ronan’s full back. Once again, talking about his tattoo with Adam made this inexplicable heat rush inside of him. “Maybe,” Ronan replied, obscurely.

He waited for Adam to push him further, maybe even comment on what he thought about the ostentatious tattoo, but he didn’t.  
  
Finally, he was finished.  
  
He waited for Adam to remove his t-shirt and tried not to think about how placing his hands on Adam’s body and tattooing him would be nothing short of a religious experience.

* * *

Every single one of Adam’s nerves were stirring.  
  
Ronan waited patiently for Adam to take his t-shirt off, but a part of him was already ready to make an excuse and bolt. Removing his t-shirt in front of Ronan would be to trust him completely, to be vulnerable in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for such an immense leap when he’d refused even his ex-girlfriend the horror of having to witness this, but he'd been doing everything so sluggishly all his life, he was tired of waiting for the right time because there would never be a right time.   
  
There was only now or never.  
  
And yet there he was in Ronan’s Lynch’s devilish little parlor, preparing to get inked right where he was perhaps most vulnerable. _What has gotten into me?_  
  
Despite the doubtful thought, Adam was confident he was making the right decision. This was what he wanted. It was too late to back out now.  
  
“Can I trust you?” he asked, softly.  
  
Ronan seemed puzzled by the non-sequitur, but he shrugged. “That would be your decision to make. It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?”  
  
“No,” Adam considered. “No, it doesn’t.”  
  
“Promise me something,” Adam said then, after a considerable bout of silence.  
  
Ronan bit his lower lip, eyes rapt on Adam. "I'm not very good at promises," he admitted.  
  
"Well that's too bad because I need a promise for this to work."   
  
Ronan stared at him for a few seconds that felt like eternities and then nodded.   
  
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone what you’re about to see.”  
  
Ronan’s mouth curved slightly as he hesitated, “Adam -”  
  
“ _Promise_ me,”  
  
“I promise.”  
  
“Good,” Adam took a deep breath and then let it out before lightly peeling his t-shirt off of his body and placing it on the arm of the chair. His back and abdomen were both swathed in scars of varying shapes, sizes, colors and intensities. There were a couple cigarette burns along his arms and beneath his collarbones, the waning brown-purple oval-shaped bruise that started along his ribs and ended right beneath his navel was perhaps the most significant, then there were what looked to be the results of a beastly fist all the way down his spine.

He was a walking blood bruise.  
  
“Jesus,” Ronan breathed. _“Fuck.”_  
  
“Not a word,” there was a warning note in Adam’s voice.  
  
“No, no. This is fucking bullshit. This is fucking - who’s been doing this to you? _Adam_ . Who’s hurting you? Tell me right now, you crazy bastard.”  
  
“You promised,” Adam said, his voice barely a whisper now, as if it physically pained him to get the words out.  
  
“I promised to keep my mouth shut if you happened to have a weirdly pear shaped body or an embarrassing birthmark or some fucking shit. I didn’t promise to help you cover _that_.” He muttered, his palms balling into fists on either side of him.

“It’s not your secret to tell.”  
  
“To hell with that! What kind of a petty fucker would do this kind of - ?”  
  
“Ronan, I’m leaving.”  
  
Ronan met Adam’s eyes. Something desperate and rabid burning behind his irises. Adam felt like those eyes of his were going to swallow Adam whole. He waited for Ronan to get over whatever mental war he was obviously waging before the other boy sighed, running his hands over his head and shaking it.

Ronan was visibly shaking. In fact, he looked like he wanted to hit something. It was only when Adam instinctively shrunk himself, backing away from Ronan as if all of his rage was directed at him that Ronan seemed to understand, his expression lightening, his palms loosening up at his sides. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”  
  
Adam looked away. His heart was rattling like a car with a flat tire. _This is a bad idea this is a bad idea this is a bad idea…_  
  
“Hey, Adam?” Ronan said, composing himself. “I’m fucking sorry some rat bastard did this to you.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Adam said.  
  
“If this is still going on, you know, I -”  
  
“It’s - It’s not happening anymore,” Adam insisted, cutting him off.  
  
“For your sake, I hope you’re telling the truth.” Ronan muttered, clenching his jaw as he gently picked up the tattoo gun with the needle securely inside.  
  
“Do you want to start?” he asked.  
  
Adam nodded. Closing his eyes to brace himself, his breath hitching in his throat.  
  
Perhaps the worst was over.  
  
Ronan didn’t even touch him, but he heard the tattoo machine whir to life, it’s buzzing sound loud and piercing his one working ear drum.  
  
“Will it hurt?” he asked, naively.  
  
“It’s not going to hurt any worse than anything you’ve already experienced,” Ronan replied, voice tight with some restrained emotion. Adam nodded.  
  
“Adam,” Ronan started. “You really don’t have to do this.”  
  
“That’s just it,” Adam muttered. “I do . I have to get this.”  
  
“Are you sure?” he echoed.  
  
Adam paused for a split second before breathing a quick yes.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The whole process took about two and a half hours, Ronan’s hand was delicate, quick and precise. They spent the majority of it in silence. Adam watched Ronan as he worked on his side, eyebrows furrowed in focus, lips tight. Everytime he lifted the needle, he ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip rather subconsciously. Adam had trouble breathing the whole time he was inking him.  
  
It was strangely difficult to look away from Ronan Lynch.

There was something furious and demanding about his features. He was a storm of a boy. His hands, that had marked so many bodies, seemed to burnish themselves into Adam’s skin, even though they weren’t touching. Adam couldn’t help but feel like Ronan was infusing a part of himself into him along with the ink and the colors. It was a weirdly heated thought.  
  
Surely artists shouldn’t be allowed to look as beautiful as the work they created?  
  
When Ronan met his eyes, Adam thought his bones felt heavier.  
  
Ronan smiled, “It’s not bad, is it?” he asked. “The pain, I mean.”  
  
Adam could feel it like a dozen tiny stings, and the skin of his torso felt hot but it wasn’t half as painful as the kind of stuff he’d endured in the past. It was more a takeable pain, like burning your tongue or banging your elbow into something, only over and over again.  
  
There was an underlying thrill to it, like he was changing a vital part of himself, but the transformation felt right instead of awkward. It felt natural. The thousand needles piercing into seven layers of his skin felt like wading knee deep through a swimming pool when it was sub zero degrees and night out and goosebumps ate at him.  
  
Adam shot him a wry smile. “Would I be sadistic if I said I wished it hurt a little more?”  
  
Ronan laughed at that, one quick, open-mouthed laugh. The weight of his voice seemed to ring in Adam’s deaf ear.

“I didn’t take you for a masochist, Parrish,” he muttered. “But whatever floats your boat, man.”    
  
Adam rolled his eyes at that and Ronan continued to work on him.  
  
“What was it like for you?” Adam asked, softly, clearly referring to Ronan’s own tattoo.  
  
“Less numbing than everything else,” he replied, cryptically, but Adam understood.  
  
They fell back into silence.  
  
The whole ritual felt kind of intimate, with no sounds except for the hysterical whirring of the tattoo machine and the empty tattoo shop. When Adam had walked in, there’d been angry death metal music blasting through the camouflaged speakers in every corner of the room, but Ronan had turned it off so that he could concentrate entirely on inking Adam. Leaving nothing but the quiet and the soft sighing of the crickets and the wind from an ajar window to Adam’s left.

He was hypersensitively aware for some reason, that they were both shirtless and that Ronan could probably feel his torso rise and fall with every breath beneath his steady hand where he kept Adam still.

At least to Adam’s surprise and relief, his bruises were practically forgotten about.  
  
Ronan hadn’t continued to gawk at Adam as if he was watching him come apart at the seams and he didn’t talk about his scars, either. Ronan was perhaps the second person in Adam’s life who wasn’t treating him like he was made of glass upon finding out. There were only a few people who’d known about his abuse, and their reactions would always be varying levels of pity, sympathy or fear for him. It made him feel hopeless and pathetic and like his stomach was on fire. It made him furious.

He still remembered the first person outside of his neighborhood to find out about it, his school nurse Emily, she’d insisted he should tell someone immediately and he’d been five seconds from a panic attack. Adam had been too much of a coward back then, falling for every vicious threat his father had ever made to him. He’d decided that opening his mouth would just get him killed.

Plus, Henrietta was a small town and his father had somewhat of a nasty reputation. People kept out of the man’s way. None of them were going to help a poor kid who was too stupid to even understand what was happening to him. It was practically animal abuse and his neighbors weren’t big on animals.

The only person in his life asides from Ronan who could still confidently look him in the eye and treat him like he was more than his abuse was Blue Sargent and he would always respect her for that. She’d been there when he’d been caving in on himself, held him up on mornings when breathing felt like a labor too strenuous to master, she’d made him laugh when he’d thought he’d forgotten what the sound of his own voice sounded like.  
  
Losing Blue had felt worse than any of Robert Parrish's blows. 

Perhaps it was time to make amends and let go of petty grudges. He’d gotten upset that the two of them hadn’t taken over the world together as they’d initially planned and thrown his hands up in the air in surrender. It was a mistake, and he regretted distancing himself from her. He still wanted them to be friends, he just hoped she still wanted that for them too.

She was right, at the end of the day, Adam knew that.

They weren’t right for each other, and romantically, things had always felt awkward and forced. They’d both been inexperienced and childish, they hadn’t the slightest idea what a relationship truly entailed, but as friends, things had been easy and conversations had flowed like water and they’d _understood_ each other.  
  
There’d always been something breathable in between them, which was saying something when Adam had just felt suffocated around most people in his life.

It was Ronan’s fingers on the small of Adam’s back, light as grass, that yanked him out of his thoughts and dunked him back into reality. The tips of his fingers were warm against Adam’s cold, pale skin.

“Finito!” he said, lifting the needle and turning the machine off.  
  
He took a step back, eyes calm and calculating, as he viewed his final masterpiece.  
  
Adam looked down at his side, but Ronan flashed a mirror in his face, so that he could get a better view of it. He was pretty sure his heart stopped beating momentarily.

It was perfect.  
  
He wasn’t sure how else to describe it.  
  
The tattoo was of a small cluster of whimsical forest trees embalmed with majestic curves and splotches of deep reds and limestone blues, the design was sprinkled with little colorful flowers and the shading and detail on them was absolutely incredible. There were a few roiling vines of thorns curling around the trees. The entire thing was merely the size of his fist, but the thorns were painted in as if they were sprouting from his ribs.

It was mindblowing and Adam couldn’t imagine how Ronan had come up with it.

The image had sang to him the moment he’d laid eyes on it. He wouldn’t tell Ronan at the risk of sounding ridiculously sappy, but it felt like a depiction of his very soul.

Ronan watched Adam carefully and Adam burst into a smile so wide he could feel it warming his cheeks. “This is amazing, Ronan,” he said. “Thank you. Really. I… I don’t even know what to say. It looks so much better than I’d initially even imagined it to be. I love it.”  
  
Ronan broke into a smile of his own before clearing his throat and picking a cloth up from his work table. He began to wipe the excess blood from the design and then sealed it up. Once he was done explaining to Adam the healing procedure, he leaned back and stretched.  
  
“Well that was fucking exhausting,” he muttered. “I’m wiped out.”  
  
Adam was quiet, still staring intensely into the mirror like he couldn’t quite recognize his own reflection. He turned a ponderous look on Ronan, who had abandoned his work station to twirl around in lazy circles on a black wheeled chair like a bored child.

“It’s late,” Adam said, without actually taking a look at his watch.

Ronan hummed an incoherent response before noticing Adam’s perplexed expression and repeating, louder and between gritted teeth. “You should get going then, princess. Your pumpkin carriage awaits.”

Adam stuck the tip of his tongue out at the other boy. Logic told him that he was right, that he should leave. He had school the next morning and a bucketload of pending revision. And yet he felt a little buzzed beneath the light of his new tattoo, he felt changed somehow, stranger and more far away... No - he felt _closer_ to himself, somehow. He felt like a sandcastle that’d been rebuilt from the ground up.  
  
Nothing could take this away from him. This euphoric sensation of belonging.

He’d read in a book once that home was not the place that you came from but instead, that it was a place you needed to find, like it’s scattered and you pick pieces of it up along the way. Adam had never felt like he belonged. Home was a thing of fairytales and storybooks. Home was something he could easily render a myth when he’d lived in a house that’d felt like hell with four walls.  
  
He looked up at Ronan, but Ronan was already looking at him.  
  
He crossed the distance between them.

Ronan remained firmly seated in his chair, but he stared up at Adam like he wanted to make a home of him.  
  
Adam didn’t know what he was thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p.s i broke the cycle y'all, the chapter name is not a song title. the song for this chapter however, is called 'neptune' by sleeping at last and if you haven't heard it you should probably go listen to it right now. you can thank me later.
> 
> also i apologize for the sort of teasing/cliff-hangery-but-not-really ending?? i'm satan okay.


	5. Favorite Worst Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _\- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood_

* * *

 Ronan was looking up at Adam and thinking about how beautiful this boy standing in front of him was, and the next thing he knew he was being pinned against a wall, his arms being drawn up over his head, his fingers falling into the sweet gaps between Adam’s, their wrists colliding, their lips colliding.

The next thing he knew he had to relearn breathing because Adam’s kiss was sweltering and demanding and clumsy and it was burning Ronan to ashes. There was no way to put it except that he’d not been expecting it and that it was rare that someone caught him off guard like this. He didn’t have time to think as he lost every coherent thought to the feel of Adam’s tongue in his mouth and the firm grasp of his hands and the warmth stirring up a storm in between them.

Adam gasped against Ronan’s mouth as he pulled away to breathe, and Ronan let out a soft moan when Adam dropped his head on his shoulder and pressed his lips to his neck. Ronan pressed a hand to Adam’s stomach, just above his waistline, to steady himself a little. As the raw shock of it finally began to dissipate, Ronan managed a choked, “You’re going to fuck up your tattoo,” but his words were swallowed by another kiss.

This one Ronan felt everywhere like a wildfire. Adam kissed like he’d been parched, devoid of touch all his life, and now he was feasting his fill. Adam kissed drunkenly and urgently and Ronan was half convinced the world around them was ending. It was only when he repeated his words again, gently pushing Adam off him, careful to nudge his right side instead of his vulnerable left that Adam broke away, taking a quick step back. His eyes were wide and his chest was heaving like he couldn’t quite believe what was going on either, like he’d been possessed and he’d only just regained control of his body.

Slowly, he untangled himself from Ronan’s arms and Ronan broke into a smirk, raking the length of Adam’s tattoo to make sure the plastic was still secure. “You almost massacred three hours of hard work. Wouldn’t that have been a shitfest.”

Adam let out a breath that sounded like half a sigh and half a cough. “You know,” he muttered, biting his lower lip where Ronan had merely seconds ago grazed him with his teeth. “Nobody likes to hear the word ‘shitfest’ after they’ve been making out with you. Just a tip.”

Ronan let out a hoarse laugh, his heart was still thundering in his chest. Adam merely turned around and walked over to Ronan’s workstation where he’d left his t-shirt and yanked it back on. “What was-” Ronan silently cursed under his breath when he realized he was fumbling with his words. “What was that all about?”

Adam turned around, a curious eyebrow shooting up. “Did I cross a line or something?” he asked, there was a palpable hesitatance in his tone. “I thought that maybe you were flirting with me ever since we met.”

“You’re not wrong,” Ronan admitted. “I just didn’t think you’d…”

_I just didn't think you'd swing? I just didn't think you would kiss like that? I just didn't think that you were ready? I just didn't think?_

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

Truth was, he didn't know what he thought.  
  
Truth was, he could still feel the ghost of Adam's breath on his face.

He didn't manage to finish his sentence.

Adam stood in silence a moment, looking unsure of himself. Ronan was glad for it, because he wasn't willing to show it, but he needed more than a couple seconds to pull himself back together after that... _whatever that was._ Ronan turned around and yanked his own t-shirt on, just so that he could have an excuse to turn his back and not have to look at Adam, because looking at Adam would remind him of what the weight of Adam's body felt like against his own and how his tongue had fit in his mouth.

There was something so deliciously sexy about someone so seemingly quiet with this loud maelstrom going on inside of him. Something about that unexpected and demanding assault. Something about the embarrassing heat pooling inside Ronan and the way he felt a little light on his feet.

A minute, a month or a year passed and Adam finally pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed him the money. It felt almost wrong to be taking money from a customer after kissing said customer, but he knew Adam would be insulted if he didn’t keep it, so he accepted the wad of cash, pretended to count it for a brief moment and then loaded it into the register.

“I’m going to go now,” Adam announced, deeply casual for someone who’d just stepped so far away from his boundaries that he might as well have been in China.

“Right,” Ronan said, clearing his throat. “I’ll see you later.”

“Thanks again,” Adam murmured. “For the tattoo.”

Ronan nodded, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms back over his chest as he watched him leave. “Just remember, no more violently shoving people against walls. Your tattoo’s a giant gaping wound. Treat it like one.”

“Don’t worry. I know all about tending to wounds.” Adam said, strangely, before slipping out of the shop.

“I bet,” Ronan said, to himself.

He was left alone in his dark glowing abode with his thoughts and his heart flipping inside his chest like Chainsaw thrashing herself against his hands and the ghost of Adam’s lips still lingering against his mouth. He drew his thumb across his lips and chills danced up his spine.

Ronan took into account the bruises across Adam’s abdomen and knees, that animal look in his eyes right before he’d crashed into him, that wounded frown he wore when he’d first let himself be vulnerable around Ronan; when he’d chosen to trust Ronan despite his demons and all he could think was… What a broken, brazen being Adam Parrish was.

* * *

 

“You’re late.” Gansey said, lips tight.

The anger in his voice was feigned though, Ronan could tell. Amusement glinted in his eyes from where he sat cross-legged next to his cardboard model of Henrietta in Monmouth Manufacturing, which was what used to be an abandoned factory producing god-knows-what and was now the boys’ home.

“Sorry honey,” Ronan replied, voice derisive. “Traffic was hell.”

Gansey snorted, he looked even more tired than he’d been at Nino’s, his hair was a bedraggled mess, his frames sat crooked over the bridge of his nose and judging by the bottle of balm that was sitting by his feet, he was nursing a headache. This was the version of Gansey Ronan selfishly loved the most for how human he was. When you peeled back all the facades from the intricately crafted persona he’d created to appease the masses, what you were left with was Ronan’s best friend.

Ronan thought that this was more an armor fit for a king. ‘President Cellphone’ as Sargent had creatively named him, with his too-big-for-his-own-face smile and boat shoes and not a hair out of place, was more a false king than anything else. Not that Gansey didn’t still look like royalty in his mussed up state. Ronan suspected the boy could be covered in cow dung and be lying facedown in the midst of a tornado and still look like a million dollars.

“Did you miss me too much?” Ronan asked, shutting the door behind him and chucking his boots off. “I had Jane to keep me company. She’s more reliable than you are; and infinitely more ravishing too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Ronan touched a hand to his heart in mock hurt. “Blasphemous,” he muttered, before grabbing a tetra pack of orange juice from the kitchen/bathroom/laundry and crashing down next to Gansey, who’d shifted his attention from his cardboard kingdom to Ronan. His eyes were searching. “You look frenzied.”

“Don’t I always?” he said, with a dark smile.

“More so than usual.”

Ronan knew that there was a question in his statement, but he pretended not to hear it as he leaned his back against the wall and spread his legs out in front of him before stabbing the straw into the tetra pack and sticking it into the corner of his mouth to sip. “What about Jackie Chan? Did you lose him to a pep rally?”

“Henry had dinner with his mother, and I’m at least ninety-eight percent sure he’d find that vigorously offensive.”

“Good thing he isn’t here to get offended, then.” Ronan said, with the straw still pressed in between his teeth, then he frowned, “Not for me, though. I would’ve killed to see that affronted look on his smug little face.”

“Do you not approve?”

“I thought you were the mom friend,” Ronan said, pointedly, releasing the straw. “Who the fuck cares what I think?”

“I do,” Gansey said, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Sometimes, Gansey’s sincerity baffled Ronan. “You’re one of my best friends and he’s my boyfriend and your approval matters to me.”

Ronan let out a huff, staring up at the ceiling. “If you like him, there must be some redeeming quality to his gung-ho persona. You only tend to gravitate towards people who are going to add something to your life that you feel like is missing,” he said.

Gansey looked a little offended at that, but Ronan merely shrugged. “Don’t even try to deny it, Dick.”

“It’s not like I’m like this on purpose,” Gansey said, softly. “I didn’t say it’s a bad thing,” Ronan stressed. “I think it’s a smart way to weed out the bullshit and maintain the crops that are actually worth watering.”

“You know, sometimes it’s blatantly evident that you grew up on a farm.”

“I’m just saying. He’s not horrible. Okay?”

Gansey shook his head, like he wasn’t even the least bit surprised by Ronan’s answer, a small downhearted smile capturing his features. “So are you going to tell me why you’re all giddy tonight or am I going to have to manoeuvre it out of you?”

“I don’t get giddy,” Ronan shot Gansey a warning look. Gansey was unmoved. “I’ve known you, for what, four years now? I think I can tell when you’re acting out of the ordinary. And Ronan, mendaciousness doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m going to pretend like I know what mendacious means and humor you,” Ronan muttered with a sigh, finishing the last of the juice box’s contents and squeezing the bottle until it was utterly defeated into a crumpled corpse. “Adam stopped by the shop earlier this evening,” Gansey expectantly gestured for him to go on. Ronan’s grip on the juice box tightened. “He wanted a tattoo so I gave it to him and then we may or may not have made out. It was no big deal. So tell me, how was your day like? Is it true Sargent's stealing shit from Mountain View's costume department to make more frothy clothes?”

Gansey stared at him. “Wow.”

“Wow what?”

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen you flustered and I won't lie, I’m almost tempted to take a picture.”

Ronan tossed the juice box at Gansey’s head, it bounced off his hairline lightly. Gansey chuckled. “No, really, I’m impressed. This is a guy who even our Jane couldn’t crack and you pursue him for five days and now you’ve got him kissing you.”

Ronan let out a low growl, but his heart was light in his chest. “He kissed me,” Ronan specified. “I wasn’t exactly expecting it.” He added, quietly, careful not to look at Gansey as he spoke, suddenly taken by the floor beneath them.

“Are you going to see each other again?”

“I hope so,” Ronan replied, voice barely a whisper.

“Well for what it’s worth, I think he’s a nice guy. Jane’s told me a lot about him and he sounds good; misunderstood and perhaps even a little lonely but… good. I think we’d all even welcome him into the fold, you know, eventually. If you two ever got to that point.” Ronan didn’t say anything and Gansey got to his feet and placed his hands on either one of Ronan’s shoulders, squeezing gently. “And that, by the way, is how you give a friend your blessing when they ask you about their boyfriend.”

Ronan flipped him off and Gansey laughed, turning on his heel to head to his room. “I’m going to finish up some reading I’ve got left and then hit the bed. You should really get some sleep, too. I’m sure Adam isn’t going to be attracted to those black holes forming under your eyes.”

“Fuck you, Dick.”

“Goodnight, lovebird.”

Ronan sat there alone in silence for a whole ten minutes, listening to the sounds of the night coming in through an ajar window and staring at the shadows that receded in between the little buildings of Gansey’s cardboard empire. Monmouth was so large that even the sounds of the crickets and the wind seemed to echo and hum through every wall. It was lulling. He fell asleep on the floor instead of on his bed, and when he closed his eyes, he dreamed of Adam Parrish running his hands all over his back and a dark winged thing roaming the skies above them.

* * *

Adam didn’t see Ronan for a whole week.   
  
He didn’t stop by the flower shop and Adam couldn’t work up the nerve to visit him at The Snakepit after that night he’d gotten his tattoo done. Ronan, surprisingly, hadn’t attempted to contact him either and it left him wondering if he shouldn’t have kissed him, only he didn’t regret it and kind of wanted to do it again.

It wasn’t a feeling he could understand, but it was one that he wanted to explore nonetheless.   
  
There had been something so grounding about being able to get lost in sensation, to wield his lips like petals instead of weapons. He wanted to be able to kiss Ronan senseless, until their mouths turned to ashes.

Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt comfortable in his own skin, except for when he was kissing Ronan. He was so used to his body feeling like a cage he hadn’t ever considered the possibility of… _other_ physical sensations. Lust and heat and spiralling.   
  
He’d kissed people before. Some girl under the bleachers at school whose name he couldn’t even remember anymore, she’d kissed like she was afraid of getting caught and like she wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of her body as her lips tackled his.

Blue’s kisses had always been gentle and soft and they’d left him feeling lighter.

Ronan’s kisses on the other hand were wicked and unending and _hungry_ \- a different kind of rush. He wasn’t gentle, but Adam hadn’t ever been acquainted with gentleness anyway.

Instead of leaving him weightless, he felt fuller, like all those empty parts of him were finally being reached, brimmed, ignited.

Adam _really_ wanted to kiss Ronan again.   
  
He wanted to get lost in the delirium of those lit-match lips of his and the firm length of his chest. He wanted to touch and be touched. He wanted more out of his life than endless dead-end jobs and study halls and empty bedrooms in the dead hours of night.

He didn’t quite care that Ronan was a boy, or that Ronan was Ronan, a tattoo-parlor owning, leather-jacket wearing, raven staple. He supposed it was something he should question about himself, but he was tired of questioning things. He’d spent his entire life running that rut and it usually led to self-doubt and paranoia.

Adam had spent so much of his life in a distraught need to ensure his future, that he hadn’t realized that life was the thing that was slipping past the cracks whilst he was so engrossed in planning for it, like most of his present had trickled away from him as he’d been busy trying to cultivate his future.

Adam had realized that he’d forgotten to live.

While other teenagers would drive out to the outskirts of the city in their parents’ trucks chewing on convenience store liquorice and smoking e-cigarettes, he would spend his nights locked inside that awful little room of his at the double-wide, killing himself over a math paper that was due a week from then.

He’d spent most of his adolescence avoiding the mere impish notion of adolescence. Keeping to himself and sticking to his comfort zones. He’d never gotten out of his way to talk to people and shut down anyone who tried to puncture the metal barriers he had up.

Adam’s life had been a rigorous quest of trying to appear smaller, meeker, tamer, in a perpetual attempt to disappear entirely. He would shrink himself at class and beneath his father’s bloodied thumb and sometimes, just out of habit, even when he was all alone.

It wasn’t until Adam had moved out that he’d realized how much he’d let his father’s brutal abuse dictate his life, how he was molded by bruises and beatings, curse words and neglect.   
  
Sometimes when Adam closed his eyes, he could still smell the phantom smell of rancid alcohol burning his nostrils and feel the jagged edge of his father’s rancorous voice grating him.  
  
That evening, as Adam made his way to the flower shop for his shift, he let his hand slip beneath the hem of his shirt, as if he could physically feel the reassuring and fierce lines of his tattoo, reminding him that he was okay, that he was no longer that frightened little boy living under his father’s dictatorship and his mother’s bitter heedlessness, that he was _healing_.   
  
Now he could be forever wakeful, all he had to do was fly by these last few months of school and then he’d be on his way to college and out of this forsaken little town that had entombed him for so long.

He would forgive his nasty parents. He would let go of the spite and the hurt and he’d get over it. He would go after what he wanted with fists flying and eyes vigilant. He would have that lofty bank account, that stainless steel condo in a dustless city. He would have eight hours of sleep, and maybe, just maybe, he would even have Ronan Lynch; at least for a little while.

Not that he seemed like the type of person anybody could ‘have’.

Adam still wanted to try. Because Ronan had kissed him back, Ronan had looked him in the eyes like he was worth more than the godforsaken deck he’d been handed, Ronan had been the first person to give him a gift. That was precisely what Adam thought his tattoo was. He’d researched The Snakepit’s prices before he’d shown up for a tattoo, Ronan had charged him only half of that price and he’d imbued into him something more than just colors, he’d imbued into him a spine, an anchor, a _gift_.

Adam was insanely grateful.

He had always been queasy when it came to asking for help, mostly because he felt like a walking cry for help ninety percent of the time, but Ronan seemed like he understood Adam’s strange convictions; and even respected them.

Even though he was obviously more well-to-do than Adam, not once had he made Adam feel inferior in his presence. It was a rare quality in a raven boy. It was a rare quality in a human.  
  
As he made his way into the store using the key Moon always kept not-so-conspicuously hidden in one of the plants that sat outside of the door, he could hear a song softly playing on the inside. For a moment, he was puzzled considering he was pretty sure that the shop was empty since Moon wasn’t going to come in until after his shift was over and that he was the only employee assigned to the afternoon hours, but then he realized that there was someone inside the store after all.   
  
“I thought you didn’t like to haunt people,” Adam said, rather nonchalantly as he pushed the door open and strolled in. The melody that was playing was charged with emotion, dreamy and hypnotic and familiar. He recognized the song, then, finally. It was Bring Me To Life by Evanescence. Noah Czerny was nowhere in sight, but this was Noah Czerny’s jam. Hits from 2003. He found the source of the music soon enough, a little stereo that sat neglected at the back of the store. It was Moon’s, of course, but Adam had been under the impression that it was broken and rendered a feast for cobwebs.   
  
_“Wake me up! Wake me up inside! I can’t wake up! Wake me up inside! Save me from this nothing I’ve become…”_   
  
The woman’s voice sent chills shuffling up Adam’s spine. He couldn’t help himself. He had to be here another few hours and he was already nursing a bit of a headache from lack of sleep. He flicked the stereo off.   
  
“Rude,” Noah whispered coldly in his ear.   
  
Adam swatted his voice off like a bug. He wasn’t corporeal enough to take form yet but Adam had sensed his presence. “I’m sorry, my head’s blasting.”   
  
“Okay, but like, I’m dead so... Ha, I win!”   
  
“Noah,” Adam said it as if he were talking to an undisciplined younger brother.   
  
“What?” Noah answered like he was the undisciplined younger brother.   
  
“You shouldn’t keep reminding me or yourself about that, you know. It can’t be healthy.”  
  
_"Healthy?_ Last time I checked only alive people need to worry about kidney stones."   
  
"You know what I mean. The morbid jokes and the lamenting music, they've got to be a coping mechanism."   
  
“Oh, you got a PHD in Ghost Psyche, now?”   
  
“I’d be a horrible therapist,” Adam said, flatly.   
  
“I have to agree with you on that,” Noah replied. “Oh, Death Metal Boy was here by the way. He was lingering by the doorway like a lost puppy for about fifteen whole minutes. He must’ve gotten in and out of his car at least five times? I thought he wanted to rob the place but then like, who would rob a flower shop, right? Satan, maybe. Or that weird old grandma from Courage the Cowardly Dog. Hm… What was I going to say? Oh yeah. I think he was looking for you, but he found me instead, which is like… weird, right? Because not everyone can always see me. I’m not even sure if you can see me right now. Anyway, he totally saw me. I think he thought I was an employee. So I told him your shift starts at three. He then grabbed a chocolate bar from one of the gift baskets and I told him that we don’t sell those separately so he bought the whole thing and left. I made you twelve bucks!”

Adam’s heart erupted in his chest. “Ronan was here?”  
  
“Uh, I think the words you’re looking for are ‘you’re welcome,’”     
  
“Looking for me?”  
  
“Are you going deaf in your other ear, too?”   
  
Adam shook off his surprise and fixed Noah with a small frown.   
  
“Did he say anything else?”   
  
“Just that you’re a horrible kisser and that he’d ditch you for me in a heartbeat.”   
  
“Ha-ha,” Adam said, dryly.   
  
Sometimes Noah’s omnipresence scared the daylights out of him.   
  
“Nah,” Noah said, still pretty much invisible and pared to a voice in his ear. “I think he really likes you though, I could tell. I didn’t know you liked boys at all but it’s not like you ever treat me like we’re friends, so it’s fine. Do you like him?”   
  
“No,” Adam shook his head and pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “I am not having this conversation right now.”   
  
He began to sift through his books. Noah began to slip away.

Adam couldn’t concentrate, instead he proceeded to feel guilty over turning off Noah’s song and anxious about seeing Ronan again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as usual, i'd really appreciate a comment and hit me up on [tumblr](winterblues.tumblr.com) if you wanna scream about these two gumdrops in love, you know the drill
> 
> the fact that ronan is the first one to make the big move in canon made me die for this AU situation of adam being the initiator instead and totally just going for it, you know? what do you guys think? yay or nay?
> 
> NOAH IS MY BBY BOY and as a proud and card-carrying member of the sad ghosts club i just cannot resist constantly writing him in. plus c'mon people, songs by evanescence are totally his jam. poetically ironic and all that. 
> 
> this week's song rec that kinda sorta goes with this chapter: night time by the xx
> 
> "I think you should know you're his favorite worst nightmare." is one of my favorite quotes ever and the arctic monkeys are one of my favorite bands ever, coincidentally it fits perfectly into the reality of my favorite ship ever. damn that was a confusing sentence. once again, please don't forget to comment your thoughts! ily all! <3


	6. Underneath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Where was I hiding out, where did I bury myself?  
>  Not a bad trick to vanish before my own eyes."_
> 
> _\- Wislawa Syzmborska, from View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems_

* * *

 The sky was a usual riot of blotchy blues and angry purples, hanging over the drowsy town like a sea of bruises. It smelt like crisp-before-the-rain air and leaf-littered sidewalks.

Ronan had just finished inking someone for four hours in a row and was sitting up on the hood of his car sipping on a can of beer when he spotted Adam trudge out of his store. He was dressed in a plain white t-shirt and overalls that had been clipped down at the waist. The sun caught his hair and Ronan thought his stomach would bottom out underneath him.  
  
The smile he sent his way was small and unsure and felt like serendipity. Ronan leaned further back on his hood, pretending to be engrossed in something other than Adam’s raw and striking and boyish beauty. “Hey,” he said, voice steadier than Ronan’s heartbeat.  
  
“How’s the tattoo doing? You didn’t totally wreck it, did you?”  
  
“The healing process has been a little slow, but I’ve been taking care of it.”  
  
“Does it look like a crusty skin disease? Something out of a Tim Burton movie?”  
  
“It’s starting to.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Adam bit his bottom lip and Ronan shifted a little so that he could slide over next to him. Adam looked alarmed at the implication. “I’m not going to get on top of your car.”  
  
“Would you like to get on top of me, instead?” Ronan asked, with a suggestive grin.  
  
Adam rolled his eyes, but there was something warm and inviting in them that bolstered Ronan’s confidence. “Actually…” Adam wrapped his arm loosely around Ronan’s wrist and tugged, Ronan’s curiosity allowed for him to be dragged by the hand to wherever Adam wanted to take him. They ended up in a narrow alleyway in between the two red brick buildings that housed The Snakepit and a fancy little coffee shop respectively to either side.

Ronan raised an eyebrow at Adam in amusement but Adam was already pushing Ronan up against the wall. He pressed his lips against Ronan’s so hard he almost cut off his air supply and his hands were quick to work their way beneath the hem of Ronan’s t-shirt, his palms flat and cold against Ronan’s skin, making him shiver slightly as he started a hot trail of kisses down Ronan’s chin all the way to his collarbone.  
  
Ronan’s grasp around Adam tightened, one of his hands fisting in Adam’s hair. Adam smiled against Ronan’s chest as he tugged the collar of Ronan’s black t-shirt down, his teeth grazing Ronan’s ribs lightly. Ronan found himself at the mercy of Adam’s hands as he pressed his lips to Adam’s cheekbone.

“What are we doing?” Ronan rasped.

“Whatever we want,” Adam replied, more sigh than words.

Ronan thought that he was going to die when Adam pressed his chest against Ronan’s and he felt the length of Adam warm against his stomach. He was heaving at this point, eyes closed and heart trembling with pleasure. Some part of his brain was aware that something wasn’t right, that they were pressed together in the midst of a dank alleyway, and what if someone saw them and what if they went too far, but most of Ronan’s rationality was stilted when he felt Adam’s finger trail down the fine trail of hair that lead into Ronan’s jeans. Adam’s breath was warm against his mouth and smelt like coffee.  
  
He inhaled sharply as he felt Adam’s eyelashes against the back of his ear and Adam’s hands explored places that sent him into a heated thrall. It was after five whole minutes of a dizzying dance that he managed to pry himself off of Adam long enough to allow for the blood to flow back to his brain. 

“Adam,” the name sounded like a reverence. Ronan wanted to keep saying it forever.  
  
Adam’s chest was rising and falling cataclysmically, he had his eyes closed but he was smiling. “I never thought I’d get to discover what that felt like,” he said. “Having my eyes closed and still feeling so crazily awake.”  
  
“We’re not going to fuck up your tattoo because we can’t keep it in our pants,” Ronan said.

“You don’t have to touch me there,” Adam replied, his pupils were wide, he looked strangely blitzed.

Ronan sighed. “Jesus,” he said. “Fuck, I want to keep kissing you. You have no idea how much I want to keep kissing you -”  
  
“But,” Adam interjected.  
  
“But,” Ronan sighed once more, slower this time. “It - It shouldn’t be like this, man. Not here. Not right now.” Adam looked puzzled. “How should it be, then?”  
  
Ronan didn’t know how to put it in words. He hadn’t ever been very good with words. Ronan was a man of few words and bracelets of bombing actions. When he was feeling angsty, he’d curse. When he was angry, he’d punch straight through a wall. When he was hurt, he’d hit the streets and drive until the world was blurring so fast around him that he couldn’t feel anything but the adrenaline and the lights on his skin and the heavy electronic pulse of the radio.

He wasn’t sure how to communicate with Adam that he wanted more than just the physical stuff with him. He wanted for them to get to know each other and hold hands and he wanted all that sappy shit that Matthew talked about from all those romance novels he read. He didn’t know how to say it in words, so he said it in the only way he knew how. Gently, he took Adam’s hand in his and interlaced their fingers. He didn’t say anything, but he hoped his expression would convey what he was trying to.  
  
He was looking at Adam with every fiber of his being. He was looking at Adam like a prayer, like a war. He hoped Adam could feel the heat in between their palms just as much as Ronan could.

Adam’s expression had gone cold. There was something unfathomable in the quirk of his brow and the twist of his lips. He suddenly looked spooked, like Ronan was holding a gun to his temple. Ronan winced and his fingers loosened in Adam’s, but Adam tightened his own grip.  
  
Ronan looked up at him, a question mark in his eyes.  
  
Adam carefully lead their entwined hands to his own chest and pressed the back of Ronan’s hand against it, right above his heart. Ronan could feel the soft thumping of Adam’s heart against his skin. He could feel his own heart making its way up to his mouth.  
  
“Do you feel that?” Adam asked.  
  
Ronan opened his mouth but no words came out, so he settled for a small nod.  
  
“Let’s play a game, okay?” Adam said.  
  
Ronan frowned, but didn’t back off. Instead, he stood up straighter against the wall and lifted his chin up a little.

“It’s fairly simple. I say something and you tell me whether it’s true or false.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Ronan said, then, quietly and in between gritted teeth, “ _fine_.”

Adam kept Ronan’s hand steady against his heart. Ronan thought his soul was going to leave his body. Any desire that he’d been feeling had been replaced with curious determination and a steady biting nervousness.  
  
“That’s my indignation,” he said, gesturing with his free hand at his chest where their hands were entwined. “It’s raised me and it’s polluted me and sometimes I think that’s all there’s left of me.”  
  
“False,” Ronan said, without skipping a beat.  
  
Adam let their hands drop, Ronan stuffed his own deep into his pockets. He could still feel the ghostly thump thump thump of Adam’s heartbeat against the back of his hand and it was almost enough to make him break concentration, but he didn’t. He continued to stare into the blue void of Adam’s beautiful tired eyes. Adam’s own eyes were rapt on his. It felt like a battle to the death.  
  
“I want you,” he said, before pausing. “But only for the way you make me feel. For the way you distract me from the dull monotony of my routine.”  
  
Adam might as well have stuck a sword through Ronan’s ribs. He gulped. “True.”  
  
“I hate you a little bit,” he stated. “You make me want to do things that I’ve never considered before, things that are hindering my grand plan for my life.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“I come from a trailer park where there is no god but the one we make up in our heads.”  
  
“True,” Ronan thought he needed to light himself on fire.   
  
“I’ve seen scarier things than you, Ronan Lynch.”  
  
Ronan was so tempted to say false, but instead, he uttered the truth.  
  
“I don’t think we should see each other again.”  
  
“False,” Ronan said, miserably.

Adam pulled himself back and fixed his rumpled clothes. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I have a five ‘o clock shift at the auto repair shop.”  
  
Adam was halfway out when Ronan stopped him.  
  
“You didn’t tell me if I won your stupid game.”  
  
“There’s nothing to win,” Adam’s voice cracked at this point and Ronan thought he saw a glisten of a tear on his pretty face but it could've just been a trick of light.  
  
“Well, you know what,” Ronan said, stonily. “No more fucking games!”  
  
Adam walked off and Ronan punched the wall he’d just been making out against two minutes ago so hard that it split his knuckles right open and left bloody imprints on the bricks. 

* * *

“What are you doing here, skunk?” Ronan sneered, as he strode back into The Snakepit to find Blue tucked into one of the plush chairs, a considerable portion of her tiny body hidden in mounds of sofa. She was leaning in front of Matthew, who sat opposite to her with a chair pulled up close. Her eyebrows were narrowed in concentration as she painted Matthew’s nails a gaudy neon green.

She was dressed in a pink tank-top, a denim jacket with several threaded rainbows and unicorns sewed into it and dark faded jeans with a thin white lace embroidery at the bottom. Without looking up from her task, she said, "being a better brother than you, apparently.”

Matthew yanked his chin up to meet Ronan’s eyes, a smile light as the sky gracing his lips, he greeted his older brother with delight, their previous squabble impishly forgotten. “Blue’s been teaching me how to dance and she’s promised to jazz up my tux for me!”  
  
Ronan shot Blue a pointed glare. “I’ll only ask once again. Asides from turning Matthew into a warped science experiment, what are you _doing_ here?”

“I thought we were friends,” Blue said, breezily.  
  
Ronan’s gaze only sharpened. “That’s debatable.”  
  
There was perhaps a time that Blue would’ve been enraged with his behaviour towards her, and while there were still times that he managed to weasel his way under her skin, she’d adhered to him. Now she took everything he said pretty nonchalantly like she knew he hardly meant any of the rude words that came with fists flying outside of his mouth. 

Initially, when Blue had been nothing but the latest bird on Gansey’s ever-fluctuating radar, she and Ronan hadn’t liked each other. Blue had thought him heedless and assholic. ‘The perfect representation of why American society is slowly but surely going to hell. Seriously, look at him, he’s a walking bad boy cliche’ and Ronan had retorted with a warning show of all his teeth lined up like weapons in a well-kempt arsenal. “Fight me, Cinderella, and I’ll show you just how much of a cliche I _really_ am.”

At the time, Blue had been a lot more horrified at being mistaken for a princess than by the fact that he’d been barking threats at her. Gansey had a different take on the matter, he imagined that they didn’t get along because they were inertly similar. “You’re both made out of the same impossible stuff,” he’d said, tutting and shaking his head as if he were a disapproving parent.  
  
Ronan hadn’t understood then, but as time had passed and it had become increasingly clear to him that Blue meant a hell of a lot more to Gansey than just a passing curiosity, he’d figured Gansey wasn’t wrong. Blue had this volatile fierceness to her, she was stubborn as a hellfire and would only bite if you were asking for it. She wasn’t mean, but she wasn’t nice either and buried under all that unwavering confidence and zeal, was a layer of doubt and insecurity. Not from being unsure of oneself, but rather from being wary of others around oneself. Like the world had let her down enough times and now she was practically challenging it into going as far as it could push her.

She was principled and unafraid. This was something Ronan could respect. This was something Ronan dealt with everyday when he was warring with the reflection in the mirror.  
  
This was an equally astute reason for her to get on his nerves most of the time. She refused to back down, she’d see him rattled and incite him even further. She’d follow him places even Gansey would draw the line and Ronan was equal parts grateful and infuriated for it.  
  
Blue shrugged, then. “Everyone’s busy with readings and Orla has one of her many conquests over,” she said, with a distasteful quirk of the lips.  
  
“What about Dick and Harry?”  
  
Blue shot him a dirty look, but didn’t get frazzled. “Playing hopscotch in their boat shoes at Aglionby, I suspect.”

Ronan broke into a depreciating smile. “Oh, so it’s Midget’s Day Out.”  
  
Blue shot him a look with mirroring menace, her tiny ponytails bobbing on either side of her head. “I thought I’d try my hand at snake charming,” she purred. “Make you dance to my tune.”  
  
“Gansey may have fallen for your cutesy ballerina routine but I don’t swing that way, Sargent.”  
  
“Pity,” Blue said, feigning a bothered frown.

Matthew perked up, hoping to ease the tension thick enough to drown in. “Blue! Could you teach me the twist and dip again?”  
  
Blue’s expression softened as any living soul’s did whenever they turned their eyes on Matthew’s buffering presence. “Just give me five minutes, okay, kiddo?”  
  
Matthew nodded and Blue finished with his nails. “There! How do you like them?”  
  
“Pretty! Thanks!” Matthew said, giving her a quick hug. She ruffled his hair before bouncing off the chair and fixing her gaze once again, on Ronan.  
  
“Come on, Ronan,” she said. “We’re going for a walk.”  
  
She didn’t really give him the chance to hesitate as she tore past him, wrapping a firm arm around his own and hauling him towards the door. Ronan only let her because she was family.  
  
Once they were outside, silence entrapped them for a little while.  
  
Ronan hadn’t bothered hiding his bloodied fist from her, but if she’d noticed, she wasn’t commenting on it.  
  
“Don’t leave me hanging, Sargent.” He said. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”  
  
“My knickers are fairly un-twisty. It’s usually you insufferable boys I’m worried about.”  
  
“Aw, I promise you're equally insufferable, Sargent.” 

Ronan was wary as they kept going, the sky abovehead had darkened considerably, staple Henrietta weather; grey and moody. He kept an eye out for Adam, even though he knew in some sane part of his brain that his shift was over and he was probably nowhere in their vicinity. The thought, while pragmatic enough, didn’t keep Ronan’s nerves from stinging.  
  
“So,” she said. “You and Adam…” she let her words trail off, but Ronan caught the insinuation.  
  
“Of course Gansey had to gossip about it with you. Do you braid each other’s hair, too?”  
  
Blue looked unimpressed. “It’s not like you were anywhere near subtle about it. Look, I’m not here to pry or reprimand you. I just wanted to talk to you about Adam, since I’ve known him longer. It’s funny, I was telling Gansey how I was worried how Adam would take being hit by your storms and he seems to be more worried about you.”

Ronan scoffed and kicked violently at an unfortunate stone, just to drive his outrage home.  
  
“I didn’t see it at first, but I think I get it now. Adam’s a little…” Blue trailed off again.  
  
“Broken?”  
  
“I was going to say difficult, but yeah. That, too.”  
  
“You’re playing a tune I’m already familiar with, maggot. So thanks for the pep talk but I’ll be on my way now -” Blue interjected, pausing in her steps. Ronan hesitated and shot an eyebrow up at her. “I just want to help,” she insisted. “Even though you’re being a colossal dick right now and even though you like to pretend like you know everything, I’m here to remind you that the world doesn’t work that way, Ronan.”  
  
When he merely frowned, she gestured at his bleeding knuckles.  
  
“You think taking your frustration out on inanimate objects is going to make them come to life and fight back or do you just get off on the pain?”  
  
Ronan was tempted to shoo her off with a derisive and condescending retort, but it died on his lips when he gauged the sincerity in her eyes. “No,” he said, darkly. “It just dulls the loud noise in my brain. If I can condense all my anger into this fist and let it out, there’s none left for it to leach the fucking daylight out of me.”  
  
Blue sighed, and Ronan looked away, suddenly itching to get some alcohol in his system. She turned a concerned eye on him. “Are we not enough? Is Gansey not enough?”  
  
Ronan let out a dry chuckle. “Jesus had a thousand followers, he still ended up on a stake.”  
  
“We’re not your followers. We’re your friends. We share your shit. That’s how friends work.”  
  
“I’ll be sure to look up the textbook definition,”  
  
“ _Ronan_ ,”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you want to understand Adam better or not?”  
  
Ronan responded with silence, which meant that yes, he so desperately did.  
  
Blue sighed and plopped down right there on the sidewalk. Quiet and slightly discomfited, Ronan joined her. “Somebody hurts him,” he surmised, after a considerable bout of nothing. “Right? Aren’t most of those trailer park neighborhoods no good?”  
  
Blue nodded soundlessly. “His father’s abusive and his mother… Well… she doesn’t really do anything to stop it from happening.”  
  
“Bastards,” Ronan breathed.  
  
“He’s never had a lot of friends. He barely even talks to me anymore. I miss him but there’s only so much I can do. I gave up after a few tries, decided that what he needed was space and that he’d come back to me eventually.”  
  
Ronan got busy with his leather bands, flicking them against his wrists absentmindedly.  
  
“I just think you’re going to have to tread carefully with him.”  
  
“Since when do you care, Sargent? And none of that friendship and sunshine bullshit.”  
  
Blue sighed. “I’ve always felt guilty for how things ended between him and I, I’ve wanted to make things right somehow. The two of you… getting involved… I don’t know. It felt like a chance to… indirectly help or something.”  
  
“So you’re doing this to bandage your own battered conscious. Real nice.”  
  
“Partially,” Blue agreed. “I mean I’m not a saint, but it’s not like that means I don’t care about you. I think you and Adam would be good for each other, in some strange way. Like your loud personality drowns out his quieter demons.”  
  
“Hmmph,” Ronan said.  
  
“Just think about what I’ve said. That’s all I’m saying.” Blue muttered.  
  
"He doesn't want to see me again," Ronan announced, out of nowhere.   
  
Blue looked surprised at this blatant admission, but quickly put it away. "Why not?" she asked.  
  
"I'm too much for him or he's scared of commitment or the world's ending tonight. I don't have a fucking clue."

"I think he's scared," Blue said.   
  
"Of me?" Ronan asked, incredulous.   
  
"Of the idea of you."

"Right. Thanks, Dr. Phil."

Blue shrugged. "Just give him some time. Pushing him has never really worked in my experience. He'll come around."   
  
Ronan nodded, but said nothing, eyes trained on the greying sky above them. Blue shot up by his side, nudging him with her foot. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll bandage that up for you.”  
  
Ronan was about to protest, but Blue shot him a threatening look.  
  
He obediently followed her back to the Snakepit.  
  
“So,” he said, with a suggestive smirk, as she wrapped a gauze over his knuckles, her tiny hands quickly at work against his bigger, more calloused ones. “How’s it going with the whole three musketeer thing?”  
  
Blue didn’t look up from the first aid. “It’s going.”  
  
“What, you can pry into my personal life and I can’t pry into yours?”  
  
“I’m sure Gansey tells you all about it.”  
  
“Gansey’s particular brand of politeness and his reverent respect for other people’s privacy makes him fucking terrible when it comes to scoring the secrets of his love life.”  
  
“It felt weird at first, but it feels right somehow the more that we spend time together. I thought it would be difficult, like two people competing for one person’s love but we’ve learned how to adjust. It feels a little bit like our friendship, you know? We’re just insanely and effortlessly in love with each other. Henry calls it Jeong and I… I actually can’t believing I’m talking about this to you of all people. Gosh. Do you think this place is a portal to a parallel universe?” Blue asked, suddenly stricken as her eyes glazed over and around the place.  
  
The Snakepit certainly felt a little dizzying and otherworldly, like a portal or an entrance to hell.  
  
Ronan wanted to shoot her a snarky retort, instead he just shrugged. “I’m a good listener,”  
  
“You mean you’re just infinitely indifferent to other people’s problems.” Blue said, but he could tell the statement was just out of habitual mockery, and not because she truly believed that.  
  
Ronan decided he would indulge her.

“Take it or leave it, maggot,” he said, simply.  
  
Blue smiled, small and elfish. “You actually _care_ about me. Ronan-I-Feel-Nothing-And-Kindness-Is-A-Farce-Lynch actually _cares_ about me. Wow. I feel like I’ve just won the Nobel Prize or something.”

Ronan tugged at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Now let’s not get too cocky, Sargent.”  
  
“Don’t forget I saw you press a baby mouse to your cheek once.”  
  
“Shh!” Ronan said, grabbing her shoulder with his free hand and leaning closer as if she’d just announced that he was affiliated with an infamous terrorist group out loud. “You saw nothing.”  
  
“I have more than ocular evidence to prove it,” she teased, eyes bright and devious.  
  
He could tell she was thoroughly enjoying toying with him. It was almost commendable. Almost.  
  
“Alright, scurry off before I have the urge to deck you.”  
  
“I’d like to see you try, Lynch.” she grinned.  
  
Blue sang cheerfully as she made her way out; loud and proud and finally assured of her standing in Ronan’s life. Ronan watched her go, his expression partly amused and partly mortified. 

* * *

That night, Ronan dreamt of Adam. 

It wasn't surprising in the least. He'd had trouble getting over how wasted Adam had been on his lips, the warmth of his breath, the feel of his body flushed against his.  
  
In the dream, they were in a forest that looked a hell of a lot like the woods Ronan and his brothers used to play hide-and-seek in when they were little. Dappled sunlight filtered through the thick seemingly impermeable membrane of willowing trees. The dream light was warm and dim-lit, like the ambience of a candlelit restaurant. Wildflowers blew kisses at their feet. The grasses blushed emerald sheens. 

"Why are we here?" Ronan asked, to nobody in particular.   
  
Besides him, Dream Adam was crouching down to accommodate a lady bug, watching it run up and over his knuckles. "Does it matter?" he said.

"Nothing matters," Ronan replied.

Dream Adam looked exactly like the real Adam, except for the fact that Dream Adam had the word 'FALSE' tattooed on his forehead in what appeared to be blood.

It was strange, he was actively aware that it was a dream, but there was a part of him that ached so terribly for it all to be real that something inside his chest kept collapsing and rebuilding itself. He gazed out across the horizon, half-expecting to see his mother in all her comely grace emerge from behind a family of shrubs to embrace him. Ronan's stomach felt like a pit of flaming coals at the mere thought of his beautiful and doomed mother. 

Dream Adam seemed to sense Ronan's unease. "Moping again," he noted.

"I don't remember programming you to be an asshole," Ronan snarled. 

"I'm only an echo of reality," Dream Adam said, with a shrug. 

"He doesn't want me. You don't want me. So why are you here?" Ronan demanded.

"You don't know what he wants," Dream Adam replied, getting to his feet to press a thumb to Ronan's cheek. It felt so real Ronan could almost feel the heat of Adam's skin, he could almost trace every line of his palm. He closed his eyes a moment, reveling in it, before killing the dream. 

"Why?" Dream Adam asked, as he began to slip away.

"You are not a flower that I can pluck," Ronan replied, in Latin.

The trees encircling him swayed and murmured and bumbled and sang. Dream Adam melted into thin air. He caught a glimpse of bright eyes, a stocking cap and a blur of hooves. Orphan Girl. "Hey," he said, softly. "It's just me."

"When will the agony end, Kerah?" she responded in Latin, peeking out from behind a great oak.

"Don't ask stupid questions." Ronan chastised.

Overhead, the sunlight got muffled and shadows began to take ahold of the skies. Orphan Girl yipped and scurried over to Ronan, taking refuge behind his leg, wrapping her tiny arms around his calf like he was all the shielding she needed.

He braced for it even before it stole the breath from his lungs like a cleaver digging into his chest. The bitter swan song of a departing dream, to be replaced with the ugly chorus of a recurring nightmare.

Everything darkened. The wailing sirens of an ambulance sliced at his eardrums. Orphan Girl shrieked, "Kerah!" and then, bloodless memories in flashes. Matthew's kindest smile, Declan teaching him how to ride a bike, Aurora singing him an old Irish lullaby as she ran soothing circles across his back, Niall Lynch in the front seat of the charcoal BMW, talking to him about dreams and secret projects and his latest deadly investment. And then - more blood, oceans and oceans of it. And then, Matthew on the floor convulsing in his mother's lap, pounding his tiny fists against his mother's lifeless body, screaming at a dead thing as if it would open its eyes, wake up and wrap its arms around him. And then, Ronan was miserable and alone. So terribly alone.

Falling, falling, into something endless and steep and overarching nothingness. Panic seized every nerve in his body and he struggled viciously to wake up. To wake up.  
  
_Wake up, wake up, wake up._  
  
Was this all there was? Was this all that was left of Ronan's life?   
  
_Blood and the apparition of cold blue eyes flinching away from him. The corpses of his parents lying at his feet. Gainsay turning his back on him, Blue unable to meet his gaze. Orphan Girl stumbling away. His sanity slipping. Blood, blood, blood -_

Ronan woke up with a violent gasp. His heart pounded a bullet train in his chest. He shivered unmoving and terrified for a long time after that. Even though he was in his bed, even though moonlight fluttered in through the open windows, even though reality had seized him before he could really die, he felt empty and shattered and numb all at the same time. When he was finally able to move his limbs again, he uncurled his palms to reveal the tiny and battered body of a lady bug. He shot off his feet and went to wash his hands off, but it was impossible to sleep after that.

So he grabbed his car keys and stormed off into the night.

He was caught in a whirlstorm of concrete and rage and gas station lights when he got the text from Adam, one that almost sent him hurtling off the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE ME A COMMENT ON WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THE CHAPTER !! :D  
> \- i know i am literally the devil's spawn. i hate ending it like that, too. okay, i'll take a page from ronan's book and be honest. i'm a slut for cliff-hangers and i'm willing to bet so are you so... sorry not sorry?? xD  
> \- come chill with me on[ tumblr](winterblues.tumblr.com), yada yada yada.  
> \- you guys know what would be REALLY COOL? if you checked out the other pynch fics i've written? they're all like one-shots so they aren't as agonizing as this particular story. ok here you go. pls do leave me a comment on there too if you do end up reading any of them.  
> MY OTHER PYNCH FICS:  
> [Dreams Don't Grow On Trees](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6274357)  
> [Midnight Moon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5327714)  
> \- P.S i'm currently writing ANOTHER lengthy ass pynch AU and it's a sober companion AU, i'm going to be posting it up on here real soon so i truly hope that you guys will stick around & follow me to that story as well  
> \- this chapter's song rec: underneath by brandyn burnette  
> \- once again, i cannot thank you guys enough for all your encouraging words & wonderful comments. <3


	7. Happy Little Pill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gently, we howl at the stars together.  
>  Gently, we swallow each other whole._
> 
> _\- Emily Palermo, from 'Love In The Time of Monsters'_

* * *

By the time he finished up with work and made his way up the narrow staircase that led up to his miserable little flat above St. Agnes, he was exhausted, angry (more at himself than at anyone else) and desperately in need of a hot shower. 

Whether he’d be rewarded with hot water or not was a coin toss depending on the construction work taking place on the pipelines that supplied water through the building. With his luck, he’d probably be stuck with cold water icing his spine.  _ One day one day one day. _ He flicked at some of the grease beneath his fingernails as he made his way up, but stopped short at the surprise that was waiting for him at the top. 

Adam wanted to throw up. His stomach was a collapsing bridge underneath him and he’d backed away so quickly he’d almost tumbled backwards down an entire flight of stairs. The only reason he’d managed to stay straight at all was because his hands had found the steel railing. He sunk his fingers into it so tightly they’d turned bloodless.

Robert Parrish stood in front of him, a boulder blocking the door. Adam hadn’t seen his father ever since he’d moved out and filed assault charges against him. Now that he was standing here, in front of Adam’s new home, the place suddenly felt tainted somehow.

Whatever this apartment was, tiny and inconvenient and broken - it was his own. Built on rinds of his hard work. It was no place for his past to seep its way into like black sludge. He was supposed to be free of that, he was supposed to be free of  _ him _ .

Instinctively, Adam dropped his head slightly. His father enjoyed looking down on the people he spoke to instead of meeting anybody’s eyes. He thought himself a fearsome king, but Adam was learning to remind himself that his father was nothing but a drunk and a coward who got off on spreading his distress like a disease instead of keeping it bottled up. He struggled to lift his chin up when he realized how wrong it felt to give him the satisfaction of watching him squirm beneath the weight of his deadening gaze once again. The unadulterated nausea and fear building up inside him were agonizing enough to make him want to cut his own stomach out.

He bit down years of resentment and hurt, made sure to keep his tone even and his hands from fidgeting. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re not welcome here.”   
  
Robert Parrish had the sternest gaze Adam had ever encountered, his eyes seemed to seep acid, his mouth a thin line of scorn and pride. For a lightning-quick millisecond, Adam was a terrified ten-year-old again, being dragged by his ears out to the front porch where everyone could see what a huge disappointment he was; his father’s idea of a Sunday afternoon pastime.

The man looked underwhelmed as he frowned. “Am I not allowed to come see my own son?”

Adam had to bite back several curse words and another wave of nausea. 

“I’m not sure you ever learned the definition of that word, father.” He said, tightly.  
  
Robert shot an eyebrow up at Adam. “You throw your mother and I under the bus and think you can just live your life as you damn well please without a second thought about us? You almost had me _arrested_. Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to keep us afloat?”   
  
“Sounds like that’s your problem.”   
  
Robert seethed, but Adam had to stand his ground, no matter how much it felt like every nerve in his body was attempting to burn him alive. 

“You’ve grown quite a mouth on you since we last saw each other, haven’t you, boy?” he said, reeking of alcohol and desperation. The infliction of his voice rose ever-so-slightly. “Maybe we should get you a muzzle to go with that bravado.” 

Adam fisted one of his hands behind his back, tensing just a little even though he had to believe that his father wouldn’t be stupid enough to land a blow on him directly above a church office. 

“Please leave,” Adam said, between gritted teeth. “I have nothing to say to you.”  
  
“Well you can bet your ass I’ve got plenty to say to you! Who do you think you are, huh? You are nothing. You have always been nothing. You think playing dress-up with all those Aglionby boys makes you anything like them? You were bred beneath the very same blood and dirt that I grew up under. _We_ fed you and cleaned your shit and kept you alive. Or have you forgotten?”  
  
Adam’s chest was on fire. Miraculously, he kept his voice from shooting past the ceiling as he asked his father to leave once again. 

“Get out.” 

“It would do you well to remember what will happen to you if you do not listen to me.”

“Get out.” Adam repeated, slower this time, making sure to urgently enunciate every syllable.    
  
“You’re not fooling anyone, boy.”   
  
“Nor are you.”    


“You bastard,” Robert snapped. “Have some respect, I’m your goddamn father!”  
  
Adam managed a dry chuckle, it came out more like a desperate gasp for breath. “You lost the right to respect a long time ago.”

Robert couldn’t help himself, Adam had anticipated it, but he’d only gotten a split second to brace for it as Robert grabbed him by the collar of his t-shirt and slammed his body against the wall. Adam let out a strangled cry as he felt sharp pain shoot feverishly up his side. 

“I’ll scream,” Adam threatened, voice low as he attempted to push the man off of him, a hand catching hold of Robert’s forearm. 

Suddenly, footsteps began to reverberate from beneath them, and muffled voices getting louder. Somebody was coming. Robert seemed to realize how bad this looked and that the walls around here were thin enough that the neighbors would’ve heard Adam’s body thudding against the hard plaster. He let go of Adam immediately, Adam slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. He could taste the familiar and metallic warmth of blood in his mouth.

He said nothing as his father turned on his heel to leave. “Don’t you think for one second that this is over,” he warned, voice like a splintering. “We’ll pick this up where we left off some other day.” The man said, with a hint of a shameless smile as he bounded down the staircase and disappeared from Adam’s sight. 

Adam sat there for a few more heart-racing seconds, wheezing, before making an attempt to stand. He didn’t want whoever was making their way upstairs to see him like this. Just as the voices got incrementally closer, he hurried into the privacy of his apartment and flung the door shut so hard and fast he was a little relieved it didn’t come off its hinges.

There was a part of him that desperately wanted to crumble to a heap on the floor. Instead, he bolted into the bathroom and dry-heaved into the sink. When that was over, he stood under the lukewarm embrace of the shower until he couldn’t feel his own heart beating in his chest anymore. Everything felt ruined. 

Noah showed up in his bathroom mirror where he stood shaking and crestfallen once he’d managed to put his clothes on. He hadn’t yet managed to make his way out, his fingers tucked into either side of the sink, his eyes swollen from a cruel lack of both tears and sleep.

“Adam,” his voice was strangled.

“Don’t,” Adam replied.

“You have… You have to let someone help.”

“Not now, Noah.”   
  
“He can’t keep hurting you like this. What if he marches over here again and... and next time -”   
  
“There won’t be a next time.”   
  
“How can you be so sure?”   
  
Adam didn’t grace that question with a reply, instead he strolled out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him, in an idle attempt to block out a ghost. Noah followed him out as he collapsed face-down on his bed, his side still held hostage by the pain. He could feel phantom hands grabbing at him. He closed his eyes against the soft of his pillows, breathing in the scent of soap and dust that was tangled into everything he owned.

His father’s words mocked him in his head, burned themselves into his brain.  _ You are nothing you are nothing you are nothing. _

“I’m sorry, Adam,” Noah said, crouched on his bed besides him. “I couldn’t help it.”   
  
Adam waved him off before yanking his head up, suddenly reading the implication in Noah’s warning voice. “What did you do?” he asked, before getting louder. “Noah, what did you do?”   
  
Noah was no longer on the bed next to him, he left no indents, only cold air, but a voice whispered in his ear. “I called Ronan.”   
  
“You did  _ what _ .”   
  
“You can kill me more to death later. I just… I just thought it would help.”   
  
“Fuck you!” Adam called, but Noah had vacated the premises so it sounded like he was cursing at himself. Maybe he was.

Adam twisted to grab his phone, and sure enough, Noah had left Ronan a text with his address, asking him to get up there as soon as he could. Adam groaned, burying his face in his lap before quickly, with trembling fingers, trying to clean up the mess Noah had left him.  
  
He couldn’t let anyone see him like this, let alone Ronan Lynch.  
  
He typed in a quick message, basically asking him not to bother making the trip, but the doorbell seemed to ring within seconds. Adam almost threw his phone across the room.   
  
“Shit. Shit. Shit. No. No. No.”   
  
But Ronan was already here and there was nothing he could do but try and shoo him off as quickly as possible. He considered just flat-out not answering the door, but that would be suspicious, not to mention Ronan seemed like the type to kick the door down if he got angsty. Adam didn’t want to risk a door massacre and yet another bill on his head. He groaned as he slid reluctantly away from his bed and made his way towards the door. He was never going to forgive Noah for this.  
  
Miserably, he opened the door, a frown drowning his features. “Hey,” his voice was small, his body he’d realized, rather unintentionally, had also been made smaller. He was flinching just being within touching distance of another person. The Robert Parrish side-effect.

Ronan seemed to note this shift in behavior, and despite the sharp and defined ridges of his face, something had melted behind his blue eyes. His smirk washed away. 

Immediately, as if he was an antenna that was programmed to read body language, he said,  “Parrish?” 

Adam bit his lip. 

“Are you okay?” Ronan asked, before shifting his weight a little awkwardly. “I mean, who am I shitting? You’re obviously not. What happened?”

Adam’s mouth was a closed line as he debated what to do with this unprecedented situation. He took a deep breath and let it out, then looked from the genuine concern on Ronan’s face to that spot on the wall where his father had hurled him. The wall stood unaffected, Adam was going to be taming bruises for days.

It was pathetic enough that Ronan had to see him like this, vulnerable and broken in his crappy little apartment that had now been tainted forever. Even though Ronan didn't visibly seem to fairly care about his living situation, it could be something he'd held back out of pity.    
  
Adam would not tolerate pity. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, getting his voice back. “False alarm.”

Ronan didn't buy this. It was evident that he didn’t, he was studying Adam with his dark eyebrows carefully knit together but the expression that had taken over his features was indecipherable. 

“Is this another fucking game?” he demanded. “Because I didn't sign up to play. Not this time.” 

Adam was horrified. “What? No,” he mustered, before biting his tongue. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for acting like a dick earlier today. I’m sorry for the text messages. I’m just… I’m sorry, okay? I think you should go now. I have to get up early tomorrow for school.” 

He couldn't exactly tell Ronan that a ghost had violated his privacy and his wishes, snatched his phone and sent those texts to Ronan, but at this point, that seemed like a more believable story than whatever he was coming up with, because Ronan didn't look remotely convinced.   
  
Adam sighed, he felt drained of energy from the tumult of the day. Juggling school and all his jobs was grating enough a task without his father or Ronan throwing themselves into the picture. He leaned against the doorframe for support, a guarded expression taking over his features as he met the other boy’s eyes.

“Adam.” Ronan said.

It was strange to see this solemn side of him, to hear his name fall out of his mouth dripping with all that worry. He couldn’t believe that Ronan was fretting over him at all after the way he’d treated him earlier that evening and despite the fact that they were still, more or less, strangers to one another. It was almost enough that Adam considered letting him in, but then he took another look at Ronan and decided against it.    
  
“I’m fine,” Adam insisted.

Ronan didn’t need this. He didn’t need Adam’s bulky weight pulling him down with him. Nobody did. He had to train himself to deal with his demons alone, he’d done it all his life after all and he was still breathing. Self-government was a road steeped with trials and tribulations, but it was a price worth paying in the end.

Ronan was quiet for a moment, and then Adam realized that the back of his right hand was turning into an unsettling shade of purple from where Robert had thrown him against the wall. Ronan’s gaze slid over it immediately, Adam visibly flinched and took a step forward, obstructing Ronan’s view of the his injury with his lanky torso.

“Adam,” Ronan repeated, this time, with more urgency. “Was he here?”    
  
Adam said nothing.    
  
“Did he hurt you?” Ronan pressed.

Adam said nothing.  
  
Ronan was getting impatient, he could tell, he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and paced for a few unsettling seconds before turning around and taking a step in front of Adam so that they were only inches apart. Ronan’s blue eyes looked grey in the stilted light.  
  
Adam stared at him blankly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Please just leave.”  
  
“Like hell it doesn’t,” Ronan snapped. “I’m gonna -- I’m gonna fucking _kill_ that bastard! If he ever comes within a hundred yards of you again I swear I will break every bone in his body six excruciating ways to Sunday.” 

At this, Adam broke into dry, unchained laughter. There was nothing remotely funny about this entire situation, but hysteria was settling heavy on his shoulders. Ronan gaped at him, withdrawing from him immediately as he watched Adam with unbelieving eyes.

Adam brought his good hand up to his mouth and bit into the bottom of his thumb to muffle the horrid sound of his own hysterical sniggering. His entire body shook with laughter, and Ronan’s expression was so pained he looked as if he’d been slapped.

Adam just wheeled away, backing up into his room. Ronan caught the door before it could swing closed on him and invited himself in, following Adam towards the edge of his bed where he grabbed the handle and took deep breaths, attempting to get himself together. The laughter drowned out and broke apart into choked sobs. 

Adam slumped to the floor besides the butt of his bed and smacked his hands over his face to veil his embarrassment. Suddenly, there were firm hands gripping his shoulders and the strangely docile smell of gasoline, leather and woodsmoke. “Hey,” Ronan said, barely a whisper against Adam’s one functioning earlobe. “Hey. It’s alright.”    
  
It wasn’t all right. It had never been all right. There’d been moments in time, perhaps, where he’d deluded himself into believing that alright was a possibility, when he’d kissed Blue for the first time, when his teachers would tell him with a gleam in their eyes that he would certainly go far if he kept up with his academia, when he’d first moved out of that ugly trailer.    
  
Underlining even the better moments of his life, however, there’d always been this pain he could never shake away. Sitting on his chest heavy as a stormcloud, and behind his back, during every turn, always lounging about his peripheral stood his father’s ghost and the feeling of never being good enough, of never matching up.   
  
That wretched burning birthmark was something he would perhaps never be rid of. The dirt he came from was the dirt that had lodged itself into his lungs until he was left choking on it. There were still days when Adam looked in the mirror and saw his father’s eyes, his father’s vicious, insurmountable rage, his father’s shadow, falling into his skin and leaching on it.    
  
Adam felt nothing and everything all at once. Some untamed emotion that was biting his insides to shreds. He held onto Ronan for dear life, sobbing tearlessly and in breathless gasps against his leather jacket. Ronan turned him slightly so that his nose pressed against Ronan’s exposed collarbone. His skin was warm. Reassuring. Real. More real than anything he’d felt or seen in a long while. 

“Shh,” Adam didn’t think he’d ever heard Ronan do anything so quietly. “Shh.”

Ronan just held him until his breathing evened out and his throat felt a little less like it’d been knifed. Adam was grateful, mortified, furious and awed all at the same time. His stomach was a violent cocktail of mixed emotions. On one hand, he felt like he didn’t deserve to be babied, he could handle this, he could handle himself. On one hand, it was wrong to have let his guard down .

On the other hand… Ronan was something solid to lean against and his arms cupped him like a lifeboat. When Adam looked up to meet his eyes, there was something fierce and untamed swimming in his irises. Wordlessly, he took Adam’s bruised hand in his own and planted his lips against the blooming wound. His lips were warm as a hearth.    
  
Adam noticed Ronan’s own bandaged hand and muttered quietly. “What happened to your hand?”    
  
Ronan shrugged it off. “Karma, probably.”   
  
But Adam tugged at Ronan’s bandaged hand until he quit resisting and held it in the palm of his own, curiosity usurping his features. “Can I… ?” he asked. Ronan nodded once. Gently, careful not to hurt him, Adam undid the bandage. The bloodied mess that greeted him was almost a mirror of his own injured hand. At this point it was a technicolored massacre of dried blood and ripening scars. 

Adam pressed the back of his own hand to Ronan’s. Heat spread between them like quicksilver. He couldn’t tell the difference between their wounds anymore. Adam couldn’t make out his blood from Ronan’s and Ronan’s blood from his. 

Ronan’s entire face had gone rigid, his eyebrows and shoulders tensed. He looked discombobulated by what he was witnessing. Adam twined their fingers together and heard Ronan's sharp intake of breath as he closed his eyes. 

“Adam,” he tried again, eyes still closed. 

“Thank you,” Adam said, meaning it. 

“You’re an exhausting asshole, you know that?” Ronan said, smiling slightly.  
  
“Takes one to know one,” Adam replied.   
  
Ronan opened his eyes and leaned in, a questioning look in his eyes, but Adam didn’t stop him as Ronan’s jaw brushed against his cheek and his breath mingled with his own and his lips met Adam’s lips. It was a kiss like he’d never kissed before. Agonizingly slow, a soft, fervent thing, growing in intensity as they kept at it. Ronan cupped Adam’s face in his hands and Adam tugged at the sparse hairs on Ronan’s mostly-shaven head. He couldn’t believe how freeing it felt, how insanely boundless.   
  
It felt so good to kiss him that Adam wanted to be stuck in the moment forever.  
  
It was like he’d been made to accommodate the shape of Adam’s hands and vice versa. 

The kiss intensified and he felt it in more than just his lips. 

Ronan was a star falling into his mouth.

When Ronan finally pried his lips off, he leaned his forehead against Adam’s, eyes transfixed on his. “I want to take you somewhere,” he breathed. “Will you come?”   
  
Adam hesitated for a second, but he was still lost to the delirium of that fiery kiss. “Mmhm,” he hummed softly. 

“For real, man,” Ronan said.   
  
Adam nodded again. “I… I trust you,” the words slipped out so quickly that he hadn’t even comprehended the meaning of them until they’d left his mouth. He could feel his own eyes widen, Ronan’s expression was indecipherable. Adam couldn’t quite believe it. Trust wasn’t just something he handed out. Trust was a scarce commodity in a deluge. Trust was a growing thing that often died out before he could fully permeate it. Giving Ronan his trust made him feel, in some strange way, like he was offering him a part of himself.   
  
Ronan’s mouth quirked, he somehow managed to look both compassionate and angry at the same time. It wasn’t until his eyes widened ever-so-slightly that Adam caught the genuine surprise in them. Perhaps he wouldn’t have caught the subtle change in his expression if not for the proximity. 

“What,” Adam said. “You don’t trust me to trust you?”   
  
Ronan looked thoughtful a moment as he pressed a finger to his bottom lip and stared off somewhere above Adam’s head. They were still entangled around each other. Adam thought to move, but Ronan was firm and the feeling of his chest rising and falling against his was violently reassuring. 

“Sometimes, I don’t trust myself.”

“Who does?” Adam replied. “Life imitates art, right?”   
  
“You imitate art,” Ronan said, rather distraitly.    
  
Adam felt warmth spread over his cheeks, but before he could come up with an answer, Ronan was already prying Adam off of him. “Come on, asshole,” he said. “I can’t cradle you forever.” 

Adam wanted to be appalled by somebody who could go from almost doting on him to calling him an asshole in the span of one breath, but he was starting to figure that everything about Ronan was decidedly outlandish, but in an intriguing way, in a beautiful way.   
  
Adam let himself get shrugged off as Ronan got to his feet, and accepted his hand in order to peel off the floor. As they loaded themselves into Ronan’s bullet of a BMW, Adam shot Ronan a sideways glance. “Tell me something about you that’s true.” 

“If you’re implying that I lie at all, you’d be sadly mistaken.” 

“Keep going,” Adam insisted, as Ronan stomped on the gas.  
  
Ronan pressed a hand to the back of his neck as he drove, looking slightly hesitant as he waded through his own thoughts, trying to come up with a truth to share. “I was in the Boy Scouts’ for a year,” he admitted.   
  
Adam scoffed. _ “You? _ ” he said, taking in the piercings on Ronan’s face, the leather jacket, the tattoos. _ “You, a boy scout?” _ he repeated, rather unnecessarily. “No way.” 

“They were dark times,” Ronan said. “It was elementary school. Declan had done it and mom thought it would help me pick up some handy survival skills.”  
  
Adam laughed. “You’re fucking with me, man.”    
  
“This isn’t my idea of ‘fucking’,” Ronan replied, a suggestive smirk curling over his features.   
  
“I can’t even imagine you with a merit badge and a tie.”   
  
“I was a different person then.”    
  
“Then?”   
  
Ronan’s entire face dropped, it was like watching the sun go down. “Before my parents…” he sucked in a breath. “Sometimes the nightmare never seems to end, you know? Even when you’re wide awake.”   
  
Adam nodded softly. He didn’t offer a shoulder or a throwaway line of forced comfort that would probably do nothing to make him feel better anyway. Adam deeply believed in fighting his own demons and he wanted for Ronan to have the chance to do the same. It was a little of an unorthodox method, but Adam knew it heeded results. 

However, the silence he was allowing to simmer between them was just as heavy as if he were holding Ronan’s hand.

“It just never goes away,” Ronan continued, voice barely a choke. “I just thought at this point that it would go away.”   
  
“I don’t know,” Adam replied, his eyes were trained on the whirling world outside. Henrietta at night, a dark untamed beast. Ruddy and soft-focused with that ever-present scent of damp mud in the air. Adam could almost taste it in his mouth from all of the times he’d fallen face first into that dirt. “Maybe it isn’t meant to go away.”   
_  
_ _ Maybe it’s what keeps us moving forward. _

“I don’t want to grieve forever.”

“You’re safe then,” Adam replied, his mind scouring places he loathed going to, the darkest corners of his filthy little room at the double-wide, the sound of his father’s heavy footsteps as he trudged unstably up the hall to him, the acrid smell of cigarettes and whiskey sitting in his stomach like lava. “Because forever doesn't’t exist.”

He had to remind himself that he was still physically present, here in this car with the first friend he’d had in years despite his attempts to push him away. 

When Ronan didn’t reply, Adam gave his fist around the gear-stick a quick, tight squeeze before retreating. Ronan had stilled besides him. “When I first took you out in my car,” he said, potentially changing the subject. “You said something about dying by my hands,” Adam flicked his gaze to Ronan but couldn’t meet his eyes.

“But I think, Parrish. You’ll be the death of me.”   
  
“Dramatic,”   
  
“True,”   
  
“Overkill,”   
  
“Pun intended?”    
  
Adam shook his head, feigning exhaustion. Ronan smiled, all teeth and flashing lights. 

As they pulled into their destination, Adam’s jaw dropped. “This is a grocery store,”   
  
Ronan pretended to rub his eyes. “Really?  _ Damn _ . I thought it was the strip club.”

Adam didn’t play along. “Why are we here? Do you need to buy something?”   
  
“You ask too many questions,” Ronan muttered, waving him off as he parked the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. 

“I’ve got to appease my crippling anxiety somehow.”   
  
“I thought you trust me,” Ronan said as he eased out of the car and Adam followed with a sigh. “I do,” he confessed bittersweetly. “That’s the problem,” he added, under his breath.   
  
They made their way into The Fresh Eagle. The grocery store was practically empty and steeped with that glittering timelessness that such places began to take at night. Overhead, a song played about getting out of someone’s dreams and into their car.  There was only one cashier and she was slumped dazedly behind her desk, chewing bubblegum and sifting through a magazine. Adam figured she had earplugs jammed in her ears too, because she didn’t seem to hear them stroll in. 

He hung back as Ronan ambled from aisle to aisle, restless and heavy, so remarkably tenebrous against the flaying stare of the fluorescents and yet so incredibly bright. 

Adam was surprised he didn’t leave footprints.   
  
“Do you want anything?” Ronan called from where he was lurking in the cereal aisle. “I’m good,” Adam replied. Adam hung awkwardly by the dairy section, examining the puddings and the yogurt that reminded him of Blue. He so terribly wanted to make things right with her. He thought perhaps he could ask Ronan to bridge that yawning gap that stretched between them.

Ronan returned with a six pack of beer, two tetra packs of orange juice, a family size bag of doritos and a couple of porn magazines with fairly ostentatious titles. Adam arched an eyebrow at the magazines. 

Ronan piled his stuff onto the counter in front of the cashier and pulled out a credit card. 

“They’re not for me,” he insisted. “Sure they aren’t,” Adam muttered.    
  
“No, really,” Ronan said. “They’re a gag gift for Gansey.”

“Friend of yours?”   
  
“The worst,” which was Ronan speak for  _ the best.  _

The cashier lady didn’t blink an eye at Ronan’s strange assortment of purchases and loaded them all into a paper bag. “Is that an eco friendly policy?” Adam asked, considering he was pretty certain that The Fresh Eagle used to supply plastic bags in the past. “You can blame Henry and Blue for that,” Ronan muttered. “They got in touch with a union and started a grocery store revolution in Henrietta, reduce your carbon footprint and all that wishwash.” 

Adam nodded in silent approval of Blue’s actions as they made their way out of the store.    
  
Ronan came to a halt by the shopping carts in the parking lot and turned on his heel, a grin like a lit match curling his lips. Adam merely blinked in confusion.   
  
“This is the best part,” Ronan said, in way of explanation. When Adam still didn’t seem to understand, Ronan grabbed hold of one of the cart handles and whirled it away from the rest of the stack before rolling it over towards Adam. “Get in,” he demanded. 

Adam scoffed. “You can’t be serious, this is a public parking lot.”  
  
“Did I stutter?” Ronan said, voice intolerant.

Adam just stared at him blankly. “What are you? Twelve?”    
  
“And a half, actually,” Ronan joked. “You trust me, right? Just get in.”    
  
“Are you going to send me rolling off a hill to my death?”    
  
“If you keep hesitating, maybe.”    
  
Adam’s shoulders slumped when he realized that Ronan was going to continue being feverishly insistent until he followed along. Reluctantly, Adam clambered into the shopping cart and drew his knees up to his chest so that he would fit. He stared straight ahead at the slight incline of the wide lot and then at the streetlights twinkling in the near distance, their poles camouflaging with the darkness creating a mirage of orbs. 

He then glanced around for other vehicles, but there were only two, Ronan’s BMW parked purposely at the very edge of the parking lot and the cashier’s Honda Civic.   
  
The pavement looked a little damp, but that could’ve been a trick of the lights. Adam braced himself for scabs.

Above him, Ronan pressed a cold finger to the nape of Adam’s neck, just beneath his hairline before leaning in and drawing his mouth as close to Adam’s deaf ear as he could, he muttered something incoherent in Latin against it, but Adam couldn’t comprehend a word. It was all static, all nothingness. He would never be rid of this feeling of brokenness, still repenting for the damaged thing his father had made of him. 

All Adam could feel was warm breath against the top of his ear and a ghost touch of lips before Ronan drew himself back. 

“I cannot hear from that ear,” Adam admitted bitterly.

“I know,” Ronan said, dolefully.    
  
“How did you -”   
  
“Sometimes you tilt your head to one side like you’re straining and you don’t complain half as much as anyone else does about my music when you’re in the BMW with me.” 

Adam bit the inside of his cheek from saying what he really wanted to say.

“If I break an integral bone I’m going to make you sell a kidney,” he muttered instead, but Ronan wasn’t even listening anymore as he gripped the handle. It was as if it wasn’t a shopping cart but a motorcycle as he shoved the cart off the curb, making a beeline for the BMW. They picked up speed, Ronan called out a savage and merry swear before leaping onto the back of the cart himself. Adam’s heart pounded a drum beat in his chest, but the wind lapping at his face was enough to drown out the loud churning of his thoughts. 

Everything around them whizzed and seemed to tilt ninety degrees, streaks of reds and blues and concrete blurring underneath them. Adam felt his stomach drop into his shoes and Ronan yelped out again. He felt like a kid again. No, that wasn’t right, because Adam hadn’t had a joyful childhood, but this was what he’d supposed most kids did. Reaping happiness out of the most mundane of things. 

In that ebullient moment they really were children, wild and carefree.   
  
They were no longer Adam Parrish or Ronan Lynch, they were just two boys reduced to white noise and pulsating heartbeats and pure impish thrills.

Ronan was a beast like no other and he didn’t plan on stopping until they crashed unsteadily to a churlish stop. Ronan let out his third woop just as Adam hid his nose and eyes in his elbow and they bounced off the side of the BMW. The cart wobbled a couple of times before tipping catastrophically onto its side. It skidded and the boys skidded with it.    
  
As they came to a stop, Ronan was laughing, awful and melodious and unending.    
  
“God,” Adam mustered, his knee felt a little sore where the worn fabric of his jeans had a hole burned through it and he could feel his teeth rattling in his mouth. His heart was still a carousel in his chest. “I cannot believe we survived that.”   
  
Ronan was still laughing as he turned onto his back, his eyes trained on the charcoal-washed sky, sparkling and blue like they’d stolen the sky’s opulence. His jaw clenched in roguish pleasure. Adam took one look at him and burst into a laughing fit himself, pressing a hand into his stomach to make sure it was still there. Ronan took Adam’s hand and gently pressed it against his own wrist. Adam could feel Ronan’s pulse against his own. Violent and vicious. 

“Feel that rush?” he asked. 

Adam nodded once, a small delirious smile spreading over his features as Ronan dropped his hand. “You’re fucking insane, you know that, Lynch?” 

“Are you flirting with me, Parrish?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Adam said strangely, the truth a black hole he was too keyed up to tumble down as yet, but he brushed his jeans off and pulled himself up before someone would see.   
  
Ronan followed suit, a smile still fresh on his face, brilliant and profoundly happy. He picked the paper bag out of the fallen cart and yanked the thing back to its feet.    
  
As Adam pulled himself together and they climbed back into the car, his chest felt lighter than it had in days. Ronan’s music came on, whimsical and hard-hitting as icy rain. Adam’s mind was quiet except for unholy thoughts about the boy seated next to him.   
  
He looked to Ronan, Ronan was already looking at him.   
  
“I knew I could wipe that cry baby look off of your face,” Ronan said, above the noise.   
  
“Asshole,” Adam said, but he was smiling like he hadn't in a long time.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- i have a [tumblr](winterblues.tumblr.com) so come chat with me sometime  
> \- leave me a comment, it would mean the world!  
> \- you can't have a pynch fanfic and *NOT* include a shopping cart race, amirite?? ;)  
> \- please do consider checking out (& maybe dropping a comment on?) my new pynch fanfiction[ Light With A Sharpened Edge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7787530) if you're enjoying this one!


	8. Secrets & Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"My mind is crowded with a forest of facts. Between the trees lie wide-open plains of despair. I skirt around them. I stick to the woods."_
> 
> _\- Barbara Kingsolver, from The Poisonwood Bible_

* * *

Adam was good at his job. He was good at most jobs, and it wasn't necessarily talent.

When you tossed everything that fueled you in your life and poured it all into the task at hand it turned into something instinctive as breathing, powered not only by unadulterated ambition, but all the warring emotions that filtered into that ambition. The bitterness and the jealousy, the anger and that itching need for retribution, for a success that cut down the heads of all the serpents that spat at him, telling him otherwise.

Eventually, his jobs became welcome distractions.

Working the auto-repair shop had always been a breeze, even if it left him exhausted and parched. There was a satisfaction in fixing something that was broken. Often, he could take one look at someone’s car and rectify the issue. Faulty bumper or a fuel pressure regulator that needed to be troubleshooted or an overheated engine.  
  
Sometimes he wished people were that easy to mend, sometimes he wished he was.

People often tipped him generously when he stayed back extra hours out of proclivity and had their cars ready in two days rather than the estimated five.

He was fond of his job at the florist’s shop too, and Moon had told him on several occasions that he had a penchant for gardening, she said that he had a way with the flowers. He was gentle towards them, careful, kindred. He handled them with a fondness that she hadn’t seen in any of her previous employees. “Some people, I think, forget that these flowers are living things,” she always said. “Just because something can’t fight back doesn’t mean that it isn’t hurting.” Despite the fact that Adam didn’t ever truly buy into Moon’s ramblings and her pacifist ways, it was a lesson he’d always wished someone would’ve taught his father.

Adam had been an obedient child with a soft mouth and a persistent fear of being alone, but he hadn’t realized that he’d been alone all along, that his mother’s negligence and his father’s brutality weren’t things that could be excused for the sake of their company. It was a roof on his head but one that was always seconds away from crumbling on top of him and smothering him to death.

Adam was good at school and he was good at knowing what he wanted and drawing mental maps that lead to how he would get there, but Adam had never been particularly good with people or with words. Maps navigated stars and timelines, latitudes and coordinates, but people were a whole different conundrum. 

He’d managed to push the only people who’d ever given a damn about him away, his words were often hurtful even when he didn’t mean to be and his fury was a bomb in his stomach that often went off unexpectedly, just like his father’s. People often mistook his quietness for kindness, and they'd often be shocked at his no-filter reaction when he did open his mouth.

Adam wasn’t good with proximity either, his body had felt like a bomb constantly going off for so much of his life. He flinched when he felt breath on his face or skin against his own because it reminded him of those rank nights at the double-wide.

The concept of love was even harder to grapple with. Love to him was a contract and a prison, it was like being sentenced to somebody for the rest of your life, even if there were no feelings there, at least that was what his parents marriage had looked like.

Love to him was something he’d read about in books and saw on television screens and heard about from acquaintances but it was always a little out of his grasp, flittering farther and farther away from him with every strangled breath.

There were days when Adam had been convinced his father had beaten the love right out of him, that he had none left to give.

Even in past relationships Adam had always just been emulating what he’d seen from other people, he’d felt like an actor playing a part. It was more the semblance of love than love itself.

Adam hadn’t been exempt from his more carnal needs, but his mother had caught him with his pants down in the bathroom once when he was fourteen and told him that the lord was watching and that he would go to hell, then she’d asked him to pull them back on immediately. Adam had steered clear of all physical wants after that, it was just another thing that he had to repress until it disappeared. Eventually, he’d forgotten about it.

As Adam saw it, if you were never going to have something, if you just weren’t fated for it, you weren’t really missing out on much at all because you'd never know what you were missing.  
  
All of that felt like it’d been thrown out the window, like every fundamental he’d ever deluded himself into following was caving in right under his feet and he was patiently sitting back and letting it.

Adam had been numb for so much of his life that he’d never acquainted himself with the idea of body heat or warmth or a touch that wasn’t cruel and scathing in intent.

In that moment, Adam was so full of feeling that he couldn’t quite believe he’d spent so many years feeling nothing at all, but Adam was bad with words, so he tried to say it with his teeth, running them against the skin of Ronan’s neck and trying not to gape in awe as Ronan just… let him. Just like that, his body was left at Adam’s mercy.

Adam’s fingers itched with intent, his breaths came out ragged and shallow, his heart was an endlessly stuttering thing as he pushed Ronan backwards into his seat and climbed on top of him. The car seat was stretched back as far as it would go, Ronan’s BMW smelled like gasoline and peppermint, half-dreamt dreams and lighter fluid.

Adam pulled Ronan’s hands up above his head and pinned them there with his wrists pressed against Ronan’s, he could feel Ronan’s pulse in them, running wild. Adam brought his mouth down and kissed him clumsily. Ronan let out a muffled growl and Adam felt his stomach bottom out from underneath him. This was such foreign territory, and Ronan wasn’t someone to be played with. Knowing this just sent another thrill roiling up Adam’s spine as he bit into the flesh beneath Ronan’s bottom lip and Ronan had to suck in a breath.

He allowed Ronan’s hands free and he skirted them up under the hem of Adam’s t-shirt. As Adam tilted his head back, Ronan pressed his lips to Adam’s stomach, right beneath his navel. Adam let out a gasped breath and firmed the grip of his fingers over the sparse hair on Ronan’s head.

“Damn Parrish,” Ronan breathed against his bare skin. Before he could continue, Adam brought his head back up to his face and their lips clashed once again.  
  
He could feel his own nails digging into the flesh of his palms, he could feel Ronan’s heartbeat against his own, he could feel the world slowly dissolving until they were the only two people in it.

It was thundering heartbeats and collapsing veins and heaving chests and lips pressed to collarbones. Adam would never understand how somebody who so viciously cannonballed through life like it wasn’t even worth living could kiss like this. So gentle and divine and careful. Adam wanted to lose himself to this, to him. Adam wanted to create a religion out of this hysterical feeling and worship it.

When Ronan tore his mouth away to breathe, he spoke directly into Adam’s open lips. “You kiss like the sun’s going to swallow us fucking whole any minute now, you know that?”  
  
“I’ve already been swallowed whole,” Adam mumbled, more sigh than words.

Ronan’s eyes were five hundred burning stars and the heart of a storm and understanding swirled in them, somehow dark and technicolor at the same time. He pressed himself against Adam again and Adam’s mind tipped like an iceberg. He fell in a state of bliss, his mind once again, thoughtless.

* * *

"I used to think that I was unknowable,” Adam muttered quietly, as Ronan twirled a feather-light finger around the palm of Adam’s hand. It was calloused and burnt and beautiful.   
  
“I’m going to get you some damn hand cream,” Ronan said, in response.

They were still in his BMW where they’d been making out for over forty-five minutes now. The sun was going down and all of Henrietta was painted in sultry shades of beige. The trees danced to the orchestra of the winds. Ronan’s head was full of rust and grime and the starvation that echoed in the blue chambers of Adam’s eyes. He felt overwhelmingly happy and overwhelmingly sad at the same time and he did not understand it.

“I’m trying to bare my soul to you and that’s the best you can come up with?” Adam asked, one eyebrow raised.

Ronan smirked. “Why don’t you bare something else instead?”  
  
Adam merely shook his head before pressing the index finger of his free hand under Ronan’s chin and forcing it up. “Ronan,” he said, like he knew Ronan loathed confrontation, that he'd rather put something off until the very last minute if he could avoid talking about it.  
  
“You have stupid philosophies about yourself and I don’t agree to any of them.” Ronan muttered, and it was true. It was a physically painful thing to him, considering the extent of Adam’s own self-loathing and how deep it ran, like blood in a night-black river.

Adam studied him quietly a moment, before sighing and letting his shoulders slump. Ronan dropped his hand in favor of running his own over the length of Adam's shirtless chest. He traced a scar that followed the tattoo he'd given him towards his ribs.

“I’m not defending myself, but I wouldn’t be too quick to advocate for you when it comes to that department either. I thought you don’t lie,” he said, features demanding and fierce.  
  
Ronan continued to trace his bruises. “Secrets and lies are not one and the same.”  
  
“On the contrary, I think they pretty much are. Ronan Lynch is your name, you own a tattoo parlor around the corner of the street, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. These are truths but they come with secrets. Your name doesn’t make you who you are, your experiences and your beliefs do. You own a tattoo shop but nobody knows where your designs come from. The sun is the largest truth and the largest secret of the universe.”

"Spoken like you'd know a thing or two about secrets," Ronan pointed out. Adam shrugged, but didn't confirm or deny the claim. 

“The withdrawal of information when it is nobody's business but my fucking own doesn’t equal lying in my book.”

“Doesn’t it become the business of the people in your circle, though?”

“What do you want me to say?” Ronan huffed, his hand dropping to Adam’s gut.

“If you have a secret, I’d like for you to share it with me.”  
  
“Do you want to meet my friends?” it was such a curveball that Adam was shocked into shutting up. It took him a few seconds to get back on track after that.  
  
“I don’t know,” he replied, honestly.  
  
“You can be reunited with Sargent,” Ronan pressed. “You got along once and you’re both assholes. You’ll get along again.”

“Interesting tactic,” Adam replied. “I know what you’re doing, Lynch.”  
  
“What?” Ronan feigned innocence. “This?”  
  
He leaned in and kissed Adam, the weight of his tongue dizzying against Ronan’s own. Adam let him swoop him in, but he pulled back after a few seconds.  
  
“Stalling,” Adam corrected, drawling it out for him as if he were a twelve year old whose second language was English.  
  
“You’re not ready for my secrets,” Ronan muttered. “Trust me.”  
  
“Did you kill a man?”  
  
“Not quite,”  
  
“Are you secretly a woman?”  
  
“I’m a hot minute away from smacking you, Parrish.”  
  
“What is it then?”  
  
“It isn’t relevant.”  
  
“I think it is. I want to get to know you.”  
  
Ronan didn’t understand how he could explain it. There were days he couldn’t even explain it to himself, so how the hell was he supposed to tell Adam, clearly a man of science, about the impossibility that ran through his veins?  
  
“What if I show you?” he finally suggested.

Adam drew his eyebrows together before nodding. “Alright.”  
  
“Not now,” Ronan remedied, quickly. “Tomorrow, and after you can meet my friends.”  
  
“This is blackmail,” Adam said.  
  
“This is hitting two birds with one stone.” Ronan corrected.  
  
“Fine.”

“Now can we get back to kissing?”  
  
“Absolutely.”

* * *

When he got to Monmouth that evening, he was greeted by the jolly threesome, just as he’d expected. Ronan often relied on Gansey’s propensity to be so predictable. He never could handle being left all by himself for too long, so when those fervid voices in his head that whispered about his king got too loud, he made sure to keep people on hand like safety blankets or chiropractors.

Gansey prided himself on his ability to be so connected and homogenous. He was inclined to surround himself with people, always fenced like an effusive prince among his most cherished courtiers.

Of course, these weren’t just _people_.

This was Blue Sargent and Henry Cheng and they were in a category of their very own.  
  
They were sprawled out across a single couch in an intricate and what appeared to Ronan to be a geometrically wrong tangle of limbs.

Gansey was appropriately sat in the middle whilst Blue and Henry conquered the far ends of the couch. Blue had her head on the armrest and her legs flooded out in front of her, the heels of her feet in Henry’s lap. Henry had an arm draped loosely around Gansey’s middle and Gansey had one of Blue’s hands entwined with his and his other with Henry’s.

He had his right shoulder pressed into the side of Henry’s chest because Blue had a large pizza box open in between her and Gansey and the back of it kept hitting Gansey’s head. Their eyes were glued to whatever they were watching on TV, so they hadn’t heard him come in.  
  
“Hello, honeys, I’m home!” Ronan spat, as he stormed into the room with his hands shoved in his pockets and his chin tilted upwards, poised to reprimand.  
  
He paused when he got another look at his friends. “Is this your attempt at human origami or is it just a recreation of some kind of fucked up kama sutra position?” before any of them could answer, Ronan held up a hand and shook his head. “You know what? I don’t gotta know.”

Blue made finger guns at him, pretended to shoot and blow at the pistol. Gansey’s entire face turned a hot hue of pink. Henry said, “You know four constitutes an orgy,”  
  
“I’d rather slam my tongue in a car door,” Ronan replied, with a scathing smile. “What are you weirdos even doing?”  
  
“We’re watching a movie about the French revolution,” Henry said.  
  
“With subtitles!” Blue added.  
  
“Care to join us?” Gansey asked, despite knowing Ronan’s stance on foreign films that required him to read to gauge what was happening on the screen.

Ronan narrowed his eyebrows before leaning over the table to seize the remote, which he in turn aimed at the television to switch the film off. “Hey!” Blue cried, at the same time as Henry said, “Not cool, bro,” Gansey looked unruffled, like he’d been expecting it. “We can continue the film once Ronan decides he’s bored of us and leaves,” he said.  
  
“Yes,” Ronan agreed. “Now I need all eyes on me. I’ve got a proposal for you.”  
  
“Does it involve drag racing?” Blue asked, with a keen eye. “Or murder?” Henry added.  
  
Ronan didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a near thing as he dropped himself on the couch facing the one they were seated on. Blue scoffed down the last of her pizza and tossed the box on the table, there was a single slice left, so Ronan called dibs.

“I have this… friend I was thinking of calling over for dinner or some shit like that.”  
  
Gansey broke into a smile. “We could have a pot roast.”  
  
“ _You_ have a _friend?_ ” Blue sounded skeptical. “Does he live in a tree and often break into spontaneous song?”

“Did you actually manage to get Blue’s ex to go out with you, my man?” Henry asked.  
  
“Pshaw,” Blue said, breaking into a teasing grin. “ _Adam_ . How could I forget?”  
  
Ronan shot her a look with enough venom to melt her face off, Blue merely grinned wider.

“Aw,”

“Say that again, Sargent,”

“Okay,” Gansey cut in. “Before the two of you rattle one another’s nerves any further, I would like to -”

“They’re just pretending to hate each other,” Henry detected, chiming in. Gansey didn’t further elaborate on whatever he’d had to say, as if Henry’s interruption had evoked a change of heart.

“Bite me.” Ronan said, at the same time as Blue said, “Pretending would imply lying and Ronan never lies, or so he says.”

Ronan ignored this in favor to assert his demand. _“As I was saying,”_ he stressed. “I’m thinking dinner. Doesn’t have to be fancy. Pizza and sodas are fine. None of your elitist pigs-in-a-blanket style crap,” Ronan muttered, raising a warning finger at Gansey, who frowned a little in response. “I thought you enjoyed my culinary expertise.”

“ _We_ do, Adam won’t.” Blue clarified, sparing Ronan the breath. “You know, this actually sounds like a great idea. I’d love to see Adam again. I want to clear the air between us.”

“Maybe Gansey can distract him with an intensive power point presentation on Welsh history,” Henry said, with a teasing smirk.  
  
“Don’t even joke about that. Papa Gansey just needs an excuse to bore people.” Blue replied. “No offense, honey. Personally, I wouldn’t expect anything less. Two hundred year old condescending brats are very much my type.”  
  
“I’m truly soaking up the love.” Gansey said dryly.  
  
“Just remember, we want to keep him, not watch him flee in terror.” Ronan reminded.  
  
“What would he have to be terrified of? Our winning personalities?” Gansey mumbled, sounding offended.

Ronan thought about this, before shrugging. “You’re the dad nobody ever asked for,” this was to Gansey. He turned to Blue. “You’re like the brat kid sister, and you -” he snarled in Henry’s direction. “You’re just… _Gay bait_.”

Henry broke into a grin. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me till date, Lynch. I’m feeling all warm inside now.”  
  
“Not to mention outsiders aren’t going to understand…. This,” Ronan muttered, vaguely gesturing at their entwined hands. “Whatever ‘this’ is.”

“Why not?” Blue snapped, eyes vehement, lips pursed in disapproval. “It is _absolutely_ acceptable. Do you know how many influential people have actually been recorded as polyamorous? Brenda Howard, a bisexual rights activist, Alexandra Kollontai, who was a Russian _revolutionary_. Might I add Elizabeth Holloway Marston and William Moulton Marston, the co-creators of Wonder Woman a.k.a a comic book legend and feminist icon?”

Both Gansey and Cheng were rapt on her, eyes all doey, like she was their avenging angel.  
  
“Lynch, dude. Our child bride is approximately two seconds away from lunging at you fists flying, may I prescribe a subject change?” Henry said, sounding impressed.  
  
Ronan merely stared at her, unmoved. “I’m sure they all lived happily ever after.”  
  
“As a matter of fact -” Blue started, but Gansey wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her into him a little, effectively shutting her up, not that that kept the venomous glare off her face. Blue wasn’t one to be stereotyped, cornered, judged or neatly pocketed into a societal typecast. Ronan would’ve bumped fists with her if they hadn’t just been louring at each other.

“How about Friday?” Gansey said, running a quick hand through his tousled hair. “We can order pizza and movies. That is what uh… the kids are doin’ these days, right?”

Gansey’s idea of getting acquainted with somebody was quizzing them about their knowledge of Welsh Kings before launching into a forty-minute speech of enlightenment and whisking them away on a spontaneous all-expenses-paid hiking trip equipped fully with EMF readers and wellington boots.  
  
Somewhere there were leylines and spikes in energy. Somewhere ancient and mystical.  
  
Ronan himself didn’t find the idea appalling, but he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to overwhelm Adam on his first day.

Gansey was ecstatic without meaning to be, and the fact that he dressed like a Founding Father and smelt like freshly printed dough didn’t exactly boost his repertoire as Raven Boy Poster Child and Aglionby High’s princeling. Not to mention he was ministerial fodder. Ronan half-expected Adam to detect the whiff of Gansey off him and go spiralling in the opposite direction.

Of course, Gansey was endearing once one got past his several frontages and learnt who he really was, but it would still take Adam some time to warm up to someone like him. Ronan was sure of it.

He nodded once at Gansey, who offered him a small smile in return.

“So, Lynch,” Henry started, looking as smug as ever. “Tell me what else you think about me.”

“Tell _me_ , is all that hair gel seeping its way into your brain?”  
  
“Did you know that hostility is often an indicator of some deeper insecurity and oftentimes infatuation in regards to the person that it’s aimed at?” Henry returned, eyes bright and gloating.

“Did you know that you’re a shitlord?” he replied, imitating Henry’s accent to a tee, but with triple the sarcasm.

Gansey cut him off before he launched into a string of unnecessary and almost mesmerizingly creative curses. “Ronan, behave,” he said, with the practiced drawl of a bored housewife.

“I bet Chainsaw could take that sad excuse of a transformer you call a bee in a fight,”

“Did he just threaten RoboBee to a death match against his corvid?” Henry was looking to Gansey with wide, unbelieving eyes. “Go to your corner, Ronan,” Blue said, with all the poison of an irked teenage girl. Ronan sneered and Gansey had to stifle a laugh.

“Can we go back to watching our movie now?” Blue asked.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m pissing off before all your constipated French gives me a headache.”

“Quelle surprise,” Blue murmured as he shot off the couch and shuffled back to his room.

* * *

 Adam was rearranging the back shelves, trading old bouquets for fresh ones and weeding out the flowers that had gone bad when he felt another presence in the room. His heart sped up immensely, a part of him thinking his father had returned, but then Noah appeared, sluggish and diluted as a dew drop. Adam wasn't sure how to feel about that, so he turned back around and ignored him.

"I'm guessing you're still mad," Noah's voice was small and getting smaller by the second.

"I don't know what I am," Adam sighed, spraying a bunch of bluebells with water. 

"But things turned out so well!" Noah argued.

"It still didn't give you the right," Adam pointed out.

"I've already said I'm sorry. What else do you want me to do? There's limited options in the afterlife. Okay. Hold up! I've got something," the next thing Adam knew Noah was all up in his face, a gift basket he'd grabbed from the front of the store hovering in his spectral hands. "Here! It's for you!"

Adam rolled his eyes but he didn't have it in him to be mad at Noah. It was like trying to pick a fight with a puppy, and it wasn't worth it. 

"You're forgiven," 

Noah's smile was contagious and warm enough to make him seem real again. "Yay. And as a show of my gratitude, I promise to show up at Robert's house every night and haunt the living crap out of him. Do you want to see my Grudge impression?" 

"That's okay, Noah," Adam replied immediately. They didn't talk for awhile, which was strange considering how chatty Noah could be. "Do you want to help?" Adam finally asked. There was still a lot of shelving to do. Noah grinned and joined him. He was lethargic and often got distracted by anything that glittered, but it was more the sentiment than the quality of the work that mattered.

"You know," Noah murmured, out of the blue. "Sometimes I think I forget how mean people can be."

Adam looked pointedly at his ghostly friend. "How much do you remember of your life?"

Everything about Noah seemed to recede at that point, and Adam instantly felt guilt churn in his gut. "You don't have to answer," he quickly abated. Noah shrugged then, his eyes had gone void and the smudge on his cheekbone was darker than usual. In that moment, Adam truly realized how dead Noah really was. That his body was decaying somewhere, that he was as inconsequential as the wind or a candle. Flickering about realities.

"I remember what killed me," his infliction was bitter as rotten fruit. "Betrayal."

"Noah," Adam started, but he didn't finish. None of his pre-constructed sentences sounded like they would suffice such a notion. What he wanted to say was something he hoped Noah could gauge through his expression or his telepathy or whatever. _How can I help? I'm so sorry this happened to you. Life is shit._

"They're good people, Adam," Noah then said, a non-sequitur that left Adam more confused than he'd been before. "You should give them a chance. I know I would." Adam knew, somewhere at the back of his mind, that he was talking about Ronan's friends, but he almost couldn't believe it.

"When it comes to friendship, I wasn't as lucky as you are." 

Adam merely nodded, dumbfounded. 

It was getting dark out and Adam merely had an hour to go before his next shift, but as he finished cleaning up he took a moment to stare out the window at the sunlight streaming in, creating dancing mirages across the linoleum floors. He immediately felt a deep impenetrable sadness. Poor Noah, a young life snatched so wrongly. Adam had spent his whole life blaming everything and everyone for his shitty circumstances, but it was finally time he needed to begin to see that he wasn't the unluckiest person on the planet, that this life wasn't a curse, it was just pain, and pain was a side-effect of being alive.

A life lived without pain wasn't much of a life lived at all.

Adam had been abused and beaten, he'd been shunned and neglected. He'd lost to his own demons time and time again, but he'd risen up from the occasion. He'd gotten out of his father's house and he'd begun to pave a path to a future that involved brighter things.

He'd met Ronan, whose presence in his life made everything else seem irrelevant, whose burning kisses and firm hand made him feel lucky despite all the toils he'd faced.

As the sun set through the large windows and bathed everything in a soft glow and the flowers bowed good evening and Noah reduced himself into a reassuring and warm feeling of whatever was the opposite of being lonesome, possibility was ripe in the air. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- please don't forget to leave me a comment and maybe check out my other pynch stories? i've recently posted a sober companion AU that'll carry on as this one soon comes to an end titled 'Light With A Sharpened Edge'  
> \- read it [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7787530)  
> \- song recommendation of the week: starving by hailee steinfeld ft zedd


	9. Dirty Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back."_
> 
> _\- Richard Siken, from Snow and Dirty Rain_

* * *

The Barns felt like wonderland with Adam in toe. It was still a bittersweet jungle of memories that Ronan had let fester for too long, of burnt dreams and death, but Ronan thought he’d be able to breathe easier if he kept coercing himself into facing the harsh reality of it. Exposure therapy. It was also the only place Ronan could think of where they could do this unperturbed.   
  
Spacious and abandoned; it made the perfect little lair.

It seemed appropriate in a poetic sort of way, to introduce Adam to his dreams in a dreamer’s chamber, a place where dreams lived and breathed. Niall Lynch had turned the Barns into his own personal dream factory and the surplus of his creations still lingered, sleeping, waiting, for a dream that was long dead.

“I still can’t believe you grew up on a farm,” Adam admitted.

“Not exactly Old McDonald, huh?”

Adam’s smile was a small, fleeting thing. “Not even in your wildest dreams.”

“Maybe I should say racist things and wear straw hats and spit tobacco in people’s faces,” Ronan said, pausing to lean into Adam’s face and blow air at him. Adam took a step back before grabbing a stick off the ground and playfully swatting Ronan’s shoulders with it.

_Ironic_ , Ronan thought, as they continued to trudge uphill towards the farmhouses. It was a Sunday afternoon, so Adam was off work. The sky was a mirror of exuberant blue polka-dotted by salt-and-pepper clouds. The sun snoozed docile above them, drenching everything in its sonorous light. Ronan could feel the humidity in the air, there were definitely chances of rain, but in this sun-kissed radiance, his world felt colorful.

The sun bringing out the jaded green of the overgrown grass, the fading paint of the barns, the herd of rainbows cows all dozing like a bowl of sentient fruit loops in the heart of the emerald patches.

Adam was immediately stumped by the impossible nature of his father’s mystical kingdom.   
  
“Those cows…” his blue eyes widened. “Jesus. You’re shitting me. This isn’t real. I’m on a some sort of prank show, right?”

“Yes,” Ronan agreed. “Ashton Kutcher is going to leap out of the shrubbery in exactly twenty-five seconds and scream ‘YOU’VE JUST BEEN ‘PUNK’D’”

“Ha,” Adam said. “This so surreal. How does it work? How can they be… ? I thought at first, maybe it could be something in their diet but obviously pigment doesn’t just -”

Ronan cut him off before he tried to make science out of magic. “No matter how you spin it, it’s going to keep being impossible.”

“You’re impossible,” Adam breathed.   
  
Ronan smirked, “Come on, Nancy Drew. We’re almost there.”

He kept a conscious and wandering eye on Adam as they kept going. He seemed rapt by everything he saw, blue gaze swivelling from the green-gold pastures to the murky bracelets of autumn roses curling around the white and red bodies of the barns, the sleepy mountain line. He crouched down at one point and picked up a yellowed apple that’d skipped off its tree no doubt. He held it in his palms like Ronan often held Chainsaw, awed and careful, before throwing it up into the air and catching it.

He repeated the fidgety action the rest of the way up, as if weighing its contribution to reality.

“This is another world,” Adam said, as they made their way into a grand, long barn cluttered with dream junk and sprinkled in blooms of dust. Ronan moved through the dim expanse quick and soft, he was usually rough and heavy in his footsteps like a downpour or an intruder, but he wasn’t in the mood to disrupt the steady heartbeat of the place.

“It’s a tainted world,” Ronan mumbled, voice quiet.

“I could stay here for a lifetime and never run out of wonders,” Adam’s voice was a little stricken as he passed by an old sleeping teddy bear. Ronan picked up a quilt that glowed neon, the sewed designs in each patch seemed to shift and dance like those newspapers in Harry Potter movies. The frayed edges and the endlessly squiggling lines were a dead giveaway of a recurring dream. Those were the worst kind.

“How do you keep this from the world? How do you live with a secret like this?” Adam asked, lingering in the doorway and watching Ronan through the dust motes. He looked like he was afraid to go any further in.

“I don’t care about the fucking world,” Ronan replied, “and I haven’t kept it secret from the only people who matter to me.”

Adam opened his mouth and then closed it. His face was pale with awe. Ronan almost wondered if bringing him here had been too much, too soon, too this, too that. _Get a grip,_ he chastised himself. Adam had asked for this, he’d all but cornered Ronan into sharing his secret with him. This place, this country, this world, it was the uncondensed version of who he was, who he’d been, who he wanted to be.

This was Ronan Lynch at his rawest, wildest, most vulnerable.   
  
This was Ronan extending a hand across the bridge that gapped them and requesting Adam to meet him halfway. He just hoped he wasn’t being too overwhelming. He just hoped he didn’t come off as vapid or vain in his attempt to share.

Adam got hung up on a few items as he finally followed Ronan in: a blackening rose with flaming petals that didn’t burn to the touch at all, an ice sculpture of a swan with three eyes, a steering wheel that appeared to be from a Maserati.

“Someday, I’m going to buy a Maserati,” Adam said.

“Well, aren’t you materialistic.” Ronan muttered.  
  
“Says the guy with the sleek black BMW he shows off everywhere like a pet shark.”  
  
“Oh, a pet shark would be cool,” Ronan pondered.   
  
“You could dream one,” Adam suggested.

“I could dream you,” Ronan replied, half his face hidden in the shadows.

Ronan then dropped the quilt and paused at the very back of the barn. He found a light switch and a fluorescent came on overhead, covered in dead flies. Ronan swore. “I know it’s a health hazard,” he said. “It’s not exactly like you can afford maintenance.” Adam mumbled, with a shrug, and Ronan nodded.

“Now what?” Adam asked.

Ronan broke into a grin. “Now we dream.”

* * *

Who was this person who could dream a dream into a concrete shape? No wonder Aglionby bored Ronan. Adam had bargained for a droplet and received an entire ocean in return. How would he ever top this? How would he ever come close to all these beautiful and unfathomable things Ronan dwelled in on a regular basis?

Adam had no doubt begun to blindly believe that there was magic in the world. As he understood it now, it was a ceaseless and ever-shifting spectrum, and within that spectrum, science was merely a single molecule of the machine. An iteration of the bigger picture. Brownie points to Ronan for showing him what it was like to live in the light. Ever since Adam had met him, his life had grown three sizes. Everything felt larger and wilder and more wholesome - full of possibilities that had never even occurred to Adam before.

His life before Ronan felt like a past life, the monotone haze of crowded hallways and pencils splitting papers and heated evenings repairing exhaust pipes felt like the actual dreams. _This_ was reality - this was life.

He was dull and plain and ordinary and here was Ronan, a boy who could dream himself the world if he wanted, and he was enraptured by Adam? It didn’t sound politically correct. It sounded like wishful thinking. Was Adam even worthy of something like Ronan? He’d been playing with fire all this time without even realizing it.

This thing had started out as nothing but a physical distraction, Ronan had seemed to want him and Adam had given in - why, he wasn't sure. Perhaps because a part of him hadn't believed that Ronan really wanted this. He hadn't considered where this thing would go or what this meant for Adam going into the future or whether they were serious. Right now, it felt like something else entirely and Adam discovered that pulling himself away from it was going to be harder than he'd initially thought.

A question mark seemed to dance over his skin. 

Ronan had set a blue blanket over the dusty floors for them to lie down on. He was waiting for an awestruck and fairly maddened Adam to give him the green signal. He lay on his back with his head propped up on his arm and a leg bent at the knee. He was looking at Adam almost unconsciously, lashes low and drowsy.   
  
The light reflected off Ronan’s jaw and cheeks, rendering him stark and handsome and terrifying and someone else. Adam felt the breath still in his chest as he eyed the other boy warily. He didn’t want Ronan to catch on to the fact that he’d been struck speechless.  
  
“Cat got your tongue?” Ronan asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I’m still processing,” Adam admitted.

Ronan’s mouth quirked as he knotted his fingers in Adam’s t-shirt collar and lightly pulled him down with it until his face was inches from Ronan’s lips. Adam didn’t resist as he opened his mouth against Ronan’s invitingly, getting reeled into the dizzying feel of Ronan’s lips despite himself. Warmth spread through him like a rapid fire and he fumbled with eyes closed to grab onto the back of Ronan’s neck. Ronan’s grip on his shirt tightened before he pulled back, letting go just as chaste and unexpected as he’d latched on.  
  
“Was that meant to speed up the process? Because you might’ve been working against your own favor in that case.”

“Kissing you is always in my favor,” Ronan replied, eyes deceptively bright.

Adam sighed before giving in and spreading his legs out in front of him so that he could lie down besides Ronan. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes before turning to study Ronan a moment. His lashes fluttered darkly against the soft light, quiet thunder gurgled overhead, another one of Henrietta’s staple freak storms, Adam guessed. There was something princely and corrupting in the ridges of his face, something youthful and fatal.

He was beautiful, but in the way a cataclysm was beautiful.

Something stirred beneath Adam’s skin, something fervent and ringing, something he wouldn’t name.

“If you want out, just say the word and I’ll kill the dream.” Ronan instructed, breaking Adam’s keen concentration on him. If he’d noticed Adam’s one-sided stare match, he wasn’t saying anything about it. “How are you sure this is going to work?” he asked.

“I’m not,” Ronan said.

“Great. Are you ever sure about anything?”

“Assurance is boring,” Ronan muttered, as he whirled so that he was half-turned and facing Adam. He pressed a finger to Adam’s lips, cool and slender. “It only works if we’re quiet,” he added, with infliction. “Steady your breathing and go to your happy place -  okay, you don’t look like someone who has a happy place. Just think of the sea or some shit. I don’t know jack squat about meditation, but it’s kind of like that. Just clear your mind. Got it?”

Adam merely nodded, Ronan watched him swallow then trailed his finger from Adam’s lips to his Adam’s apple. His body shivered without his permission as Ronan tapped out a quick rhythm against it for a moment before retreating.

“How long will it take?” Adam said, when he’d relocated his voice.   
  
“We’re only going to be a dream minute. I can’t run the risk of getting you killed. I like your face the way it is, Parrish, _intact_ .” 

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

Adam didn’t press as he closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift.

When he woke up, he was somewhere unimaginable. Ronan stood besides him, tight-lipped and forlorn, Adam had to gently grip on to the other boy’s shoulder, just to feel something real.

“Welcome to Narnia,” Ronan joked.   
  
Adam’s voice came out like a whisper in the wind. He recognized it as his own, but it sounded as alien as a stranger. “Jesus, Ronan,”

“Antonyms,”   
  
Adam didn’t know if he was comparing himself to the devil, but nobody devilish could create things so full and pure. “Not quite,” Adam replied, ignoring the look Ronan shot him at that.

Adam finally disentangled himself from the overwhelming enigma that was building in his chest like a vacuum and took a look around. It was a forest, but it didn’t feel like an ordinary forest. It felt like something stuck in between ethers, a dream within the coursing veins of reality, or a reality within the coursing veins of a dream. Adam couldn’t quite tell.

The trees seemed loud, and not loud like leaves skittering in the autumn wind; loud like whispers and screams. Somehow, they seemed to be achieving the infliction of both at the very same time.

The sun was setting, so everything glittered in tangerine light. Ronan’s face was bathed gold, his dark clothes so stark against the burning twilight it chilled Adam to the bone. Birds swooped overhead, disappearing into the dreamt stratosphere. Dim stars were beginning to make themselves known, gauzy and distant behind the translucent bodies of the clouds.   
  
_What was this place what was this person who could imagine such a place -_

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Ronan said, Adam could tell he meant it ironically from the way he pressed his lips together, thinly in an exclusionary smile.   
  
“I’m friends with a ghost,’ Adam said. “It’s not as impressive as controlling dreams but it’s what challenged my fundamental beliefs in the first place.”

“Sometimes the dreams control me,” Ronan muttered. “That’s what gave me trust issues with science. I remember I was five - _fucking_ five, and I woke up this one morning with my hands on fire. Dad never warned me about how bloodthirsty they could get, he saw life like this grand adventure,” his voice turned almost unbearably low. “I think that’s what killed him.”

“They?” Adam cocked an eyebrow.

“The night terrors,” Ronan replied, shaking his head. “Ugly bastards.”

“What is this place?” Adam asked.   
  
“Cabeswater,” the words rolled off Ronan’s tongue with both affection and disdain. His eyes reflected the intense stare of the departing sun. “I’ll take you there for real someday.”

“Wait a minute. This place actually exists?” Adam questioned, alarmed.

“All dreams exist somewhere,” Ronan muttered, rather cryptically, brows drawn together in thought. “It just depends on your definition of existence.”

“Oh, no,” Adam drew back, raising his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not contemplating _that_ right now, I’m not mentally prepared for an existential crisis.”

When Ronan let out a dry laugh, Adam sighed. “How can we be awake and asleep at the same time?”  
  
“I know when I’m awake and when I’m sleep,” Ronan said, immediately. “This is neither.”

“This is incredible,” Adam turned to the other boy and pressed a thumb to his cheekbone.   
  
Ronan’s expression remained calm, but there was turbulence in his eyes. He seemed a little spooked, but when Adam withdrew his hand, Ronan firmly grabbed hold of it and pulled him close. When Adam’s breath caught, Ronan pressed their lips together. Every version of reality began to slip away and Adam was consumed with thoughts of only flesh and more flesh.   
  
Teeth grazing skin and pulses fumbling for stability. Ronan’s hands found the hem of Adam’s t-shirt, the fingers against his skin soft, reassuring and quick as warm water. Adam draped his hands behind Ronan’s head but cut off to leave a blazing trail of kisses down Ronan’s neck.

“I’ve never kissed someone in a dream before,” Adam’s words were breathless.  
  
“Every goddamn second I spend with you is a dream,” Ronan rasped in reply.

“Thematic much?” Adam said, and Ronan let out a low growl. The truth was simple and the truth was burning him to the ground. Adam had never known love or affection, they’d been reduced to mere stranger concepts in his mind. He’d grown up in brutality and that oppression had been all he’d known for the longest time.   
  
Adam lost his trail of thought as he momentarily looked away from the rapid fires of Ronan’s eyes.

Fireflies had begun to skitter out of their hiding places, flustering about them like tiny orbs of sentient candlelight. In the distance, Adam caught the eye of a beautiful pale buck, his antlers like branches or roots. He watched them and they watched him.

He was the creator of beautiful things and Adam felt like he was trespassing in his life. Only he wasn’t and Ronan seemed to want this, want him. Even though he barely earned enough to scrape by school, even though he often smelt like engine grease and dust, even though he was Adam Parrish, army of one.

_This_ \- kissing Ronan and feeling the igniting rush in his veins and the spiralling heat spreading in his stomach was healing, it told him that perhaps he wasn’t a broken thing after all, that he hadn’t been born wrong or without the ability to love. His father hadn’t beaten the humanity out of him after all. There was still something inside him that was salvageable and it was hungry, had been hungry forever.

It was scary, the idea of surrendering to these emotions, of letting this dream boy and his wild, insane world swallow him whole. He couldn’t imagine piecing himself back together after he’d already been stricken so many times.

Adam had to know. He had to know if he could let himself give himself over to something other than his thirst for a wealthier future. He had to know that this was okay, that Ronan would take a look at him - a real look at him, and see him for what he really was and still want him even after.

Adam laced their fingers together and brought Ronan’s fist up to his mouth so that he could kiss every knuckle. He paused a few seconds in. “Do you still want this?” his lips ghosted over Ronan’s fingers.

Ronan’s voice was a low, gnarled thing. “Don’t be stupid, Parrish.”

“I have to ask,” Adam’s voice had shrunk to a whisper.

“Fucking hell, you always have to make me spell things out for you, don’t you?” but he didn’t spell anything out, he barreled into Adam so hard that his back hit cold bark before pressing a kiss to his jaw, the pulse point on his throat, beneath his collarbone. “Yes, fuckhead,” Ronan said, against Adam’s heaving chest. “Always, yes.”

Adam closed his eyes against the sheer easement of those abating words.

“There’s not much I can offer you,” Adam warned.

“Good,” Ronan muttered. “There’s nothing that I want.”

“Everybody wants something,” Adam reminded.  
  
“You’re right,” Ronan said, pretending to mule over Adam’s words. “I _do_ want something,” he said, as he broke into a devious smile. He pulled Adam’s shirt up until Adam had to assist him by shrugging out of it. Ronan’s mouth followed a trail of bruises from the dip in his chest to his abdomen and into his pants. It was when he felt a clutching hand against the denim of his jeans that Adam tossed his head back in a rattled gasp.

It was Ronan testing his limits, gently and steadily, it was Adam fighting for control but losing to that useless and jellied feeling in his knees. It was Ronan’s lips skirting a deep gash that shot across his ribcage and Adam’s brain reduced to softness and static, madness and pleasure.

There was a triumphant glaze in Ronan’s blue eyes as he slithered his way back up Adam’s body, marking every nook and inch of him. When Ronan pressed him into another kiss, this one lazy and smouldering; Adam slapped a hand into the other boy’s chest and pushed him down into the grass to straddle him. His palms ran the length of Ronan’s arms till he could pull them up over his head, one finger slipping beneath the leather bands he wore around his wrist.

They traced every curve and dip of each other’s bodies. They kissed for what felt like hours but could’ve been minutes. Adam’s hesitance all evaporated as he mapped the length of Ronan’s tattoo with his tongue and then Ronan’s hands drawing lazy circles down his bare back and then lips battling for dominance.

So it wasn’t a surprise as much as a cockblock when a taloned creature with gargoyle eyes and a screech like a hyena ripped through the skies like a helicopter on fire. Enormous and dark as a tornado staggering towards them, shadowing them.

“Fuck,” Ronan groaned, sounding more annoyed than threatened. “I have to end the dream.”

“What the hell is that?”  
  
“My least favorite form of Pokemon,” Ronan joked.

Adam opened his mouth to reply or reprimand but the dreamscape melted all around them.

All he felt as the glowing forest washed away was Ronan’s heartbeat against his chest and the inhuman wailing of a nightmare creature.

* * *

 

“Are you breathing, Parrish?” Ronan asked, as they were driving back towards Monmouth. “It’s ungodly to bring a corpse home to the family, you know.”

Adam had been quiet after he’d made it out of the dream realm in one piece. It still felt like too much to stomach. The madness of it all, the _magic_ of it all.

Magic was real? Magic was _real_ .   
  
His veins seemed to gasp and thrum with the knowledge of it.

There remained no more space for skepticism. Disbelief had at this point, turned irregular, turned moot. When there were dead boys and wakeful dreams in the world, anything was possible. The world seemed to expand and grow until Adam’s mind couldn’t quite contain the enormity of it. He hadn’t truly believed and now belief was all that he could feel, churning like a black hole inside him. 

A scattered, almost nauseating belief.

He then thought about time slipping, how glorious it felt to lose himself under Ronan’s gravity, the pull of it strong as a narcotic. How he was trailer park dust and uninspiring and bland. That at the end of the day, they were opposites, he was perverse and Ronan was pure.

That night, sitting in the passenger seat of a dreamer’s shark-like car, with the wind and the glittering pavement, Adam felt like an ungodly thing himself.  

“I know that look,” Ronan continued, sounding a little vexed when Adam didn’t respond. “No brooding in my car. That’s the rule. There should be a sticker here somewhere,”

Ronan sighed when Adam continued being mute but slanted a blank glance his way.  
  
“What does it _take_ , man?” he asked, a look strangely close to pleading in his eyes, but that was ridiculous, Ronan Lynch didn’t plead, he punished.

“What?” Adam asked, playing dumb.  
  
“Why do you treat yourself like you’re the fucking antichrist? Doesn’t it get exhausting carrying all that hatred around?”

“I can never be like you.” Adam replied, miserably.

Ronan looked alarmed at the mere notion. “Why would you _want_ to be? I’m a fuck up, man. We all are. It’s okay, you’re okay. Hell, you’re fucking smart. You work three jobs and still manage to be an A grade student. Now only a magician could accomplish that.”

Those words were perhaps the closest to kindness Ronan had ever gotten, the thought left Adam’s skin buzzing and his heart turning in his chest. What was he to do with this lofty admiration? What was he to do with this churning want?

Strangely enough, Ronan had come to know a great deal about how Adam worked. It was possible Adam had always been aware of this but had preferred to consider himself - particularly the more unsightly parts of himself - impenetrable. 

Adam would never be able to put into words what he was feeling. Now that he was seeing the world in newfangled shades everything felt bigger, brighter, more full of possibility. He wondered if the birds in the trees were secretly dragons, if there were wolves sauntering about the shrubbery. He wondered if science was a mask the world wore to better understand the illogic of it all.

He felt like someone had taken a trip inside his head and rearranged every ideal he’d ever subscribed to.

It was change, but it wasn’t negative change.

Ronan’s lips were a soft and welcome weight, burning the spiralling thoughts away. Adam was the first to pull back, but he didn’t stop thinking about Ronan’s kisses the rest of the way. Love still felt like a shout in the void but he didn’t quite care. He wasn’t much for labels anyway.

All he knew was that this was nice and that for the first time in his life, he truly wanted for someone to _stay_.

There were a lot of things, of course, that he didn’t know. He didn’t know how dreams could merge into reality, he didn’t know how magic worked, he didn’t know what this was in between them, he didn’t know if the sun would swallow them whole tomorrow.

He just knew that he wanted to take his time finding out.

* * *

“What if they don’t like me?” he said as they stood by the door.

Ronan considered this. “Are you a misogynist, an animal-hater or a serial killer?”  
  
“No,” Adam said, with a small frown at the casual cadence of his voice. Ronan shrugged, as if that assured his chances of approval.

Ronan then wrenched the door open and stormed in. All unannounced like death or a hot spring. “Guess what,” he said.

“Ooh, oh!” came a familiar female voice. “You got me a pony? Jeez, _thanks_ Ronan. You know how I’ve always wanted one. Will it fit in my room? Does it have purple stripes?”

Adam hung around back, his unease heavy enough to abate his fear of judgement.

“Even better,” Ronan said, tone unfamiliar. “I come bearing one of your ex conquests.”

Adam blanched at the same time as Blue let out a soft gasp, but it sounded more like outrage than surprise. They’d been forewarned about Adam’s arrival.

_“Ronan Lynch,”_ Blue snapped, sounding like a disapproving mother chastising her kid for using a curse word, but the second her eyes met Adam’s, she broke into a smile so elfin and wide Adam felt all his muscles tense, like they were being pulled by the gravity of her glee.

“Adam!” she hopped off the couch where she’d been seated and ambled over to him on bouncy legs. “I’m so glad to see you.”

He would've hardly believed that, but then she wrapped her small arms around his middle in a hug. Suddenly he felt all the guilt he’d been carrying about the way that things had ended in between them swarm to his cheeks. “Blue,” he said, dropping his chin atop her messy head. “I don’t know where to begin -”

_“Pshaw,”_ she said, pulling back and cutting him off with a dismissive gesture. “None of that now. Please, make yourself at home and try not to choke on the scent of mint and factory fumes. We don’t understand the factory part. By the way, I thought I should forewarn you, the bathroom’s literally in the kitchen. We don’t understand that, either.”

“Also the laundry,” chimed Ronan.

“Hey,” a male voice called, from his post in the kitchen/bathroom/laundry. “Stop making us sound like mongrels. I promise it’s still sanitary.” Adam thought his voice sounded like smoothened stone. Instantly, he recognized that it belonged to Gansey, Ronan’s best worst friend. Only someone with a lofty name like that could have such a lofty voice to match.

“Yeah, he’s only breaking like four health code violations,” said a boy with hair spiked to the nines and teeth white as pure diamonds. He was wearing a temporary tattoo with Madonna's face on it on his upper arm and a string of Hello Kitty stickers on the other. Adam didn't ask.

“Gansey!” Blue called, loud and deliberate. “Come greet our guest!”  
  
Ronan kicked off his shoes and hovered past them all, disappearing into his room, effectively leaving Adam alone with Blue and a couple of raven boys to end the reigns of all other raven boys.

Gansey floated out of the kitchen just then, somehow managing to look both like a male model at a magazine shoot and an old wise man with an appetency for history. His shirt was of a certain cyan that made Adam’s eyes hurt as if he were gazing into a neon light. His glasses sat askew on the bridge of his nose, but everything else about him was taut edges and regal lines.

Madonna Boy had caught his gaze. “If you’re wondering if you’ve walked onto the set of an infomercial, I assure you that’s just Ganseyman.”

Gansey ignored this comment and sidled up to Blue, stretching a hand out towards Adam, his smile was placid, his eyes bright. “I believe we’ve met before, but not formally. I’m Gansey. Uh, Just Gansey.” He said politely, while slanting a warning look at his friends.

“Alternatively, you can call him Dick.” Henry added.

Adam shook the other boy’s hand despite the fact that his were clammy and Gansey’s skin felt like paper money. It was one firm shake rather than a complicated or exaggerated slap riot, an unlucky cross most teenage boys at his school had to bear in order to be considered a vital addition to society.

Adam much prefered the arcane shake of hands and appreciated that for once, he wasn’t alone on that belief.

“Nice to meet you, Just Gansey,” he said, with a small smile of his own, which he sincerely hoped look less awkward than he was picturing in his mind.

“Right back at you,” Gansey said. “Ronan has told us so much about you. Good things, I assure you.” Adam found it difficult to believe that Ronan had mentioned him to them at all, let alone said something nice, but the evidence certainly suggested otherwise. They had after all, known he was coming.

“Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Beer? Dr. Pepper?” Gansey asked.

“Tea?” Blue continued.

Gansey’s brow furrowed at that, his expression ill at the mere mention.

“You’re not planning on poisoning him, are you now, Sargent?” Ronan said, strolling back into the room with a bird huddled against his chest. Why was there a bird huddled against his chest? Adam peered closer at the tiny little thing, its feathers large and black as outerspace, its eyes beady and wide. It was a raven, Adam quickly gathered, one that looked equally as irascible and ethereal as Ronan himself.

Blue looked outraged at the accusation. “I am not my mother!”

“Of course not,” muttered Madonna Boy. “Your brews are only marginally less undrinkable.”

“Didn’t ask for your opinion, Cheng.”  
  
“And alas, you got it anyway. How else may I contribute to R. Gansey’s precious cabinet if not for my quantum of wisdom?”

Gansey spared his friend a fleeting glance. “You contribute plenty, Henry.”

"Uh... Water's fine. Thank you." Adam chimed.

“Meet Chainsaw,” Ronan said, closing the distance between them. “Don’t touch her though, she’ll bite your fingers off.”

“Why do you have a bird?” Adam asked, puzzled.  
  
“He dreamt her,” Blue supplied. “We love Chainsaw, but one would think that if you could pull absolutely anything out of your dreams, you’d go for something like a dragon or a kraken rather than an ordinary corvid. It’s not like Henrietta isn’t crawling with crows already.”

“Like Sargent, for example,” Ronan scowled, bitterly, while cupping the bird's head as if to spare her the offense.   
  
“I thought I was a maggot?”

“That too.”

Henry Cheng, Adam thought the name rang a bell. He took a second look at the boy and a memory flashed. Henry caught his gaze and held it there a moment before shooting off the couch with an excitable glint in his eye. “Hey, I know you, Parrish!” he exclaimed, surprising everyone.

Blue cocked her head to the side in confusion. Gansey pressed a thumb to his lip. Ronan frowned disdainfully. “What?”   
  
“Sixth grade spelling bee,” Adam said, not meeting anyone’s eyes.   
  
“You beat me by the word ‘balderdash’, I spelled it with an O instead of an A. Damnit. It was such a close call!”

Adam knew Cheng because most people in Henrietta were aware of the Vancouver Crowd with their large mansions and their million-dollar smiles, their cloying colognes and penchant for trouble. Rumor had it Cheng 2 wrote their standardized tests for people and charged them a hefty amount - a price worth the prize, that Sick Steve could wring a snake and then eat it with his bare hands. 

Henry himself was known as a social chameleon, adapting to anything. He’d been the drama club president for three unwavering years, he’d reinstated Aglionby’s old rotary club, he’d aided in setting up the pep rallies and volunteered community service on Sundays. Any extracurricular you could name and chances were it had Cheng’s name on it.

“Well, that’s a wonderful surprise,” Gansey said. “So, Adam,” he turned back to him. “I heard you work at Margaret’s down the street. Immaculate place, lovely woman, but it mustn't pay much. You know Boston Morgana? My father owns four-thirds of a share in the company, I would be delighted to land you a job there. It pays favorably, too. The benefits are -”

“You.” Blue said, effectively cutting him off. “Shut up before you say something offensive.”

Gansey looked like he wanted to protest, but then he met Blue’s eyes and faltered immediately. His cheeks reddening slightly.

Gansey turned on his heel, “I’ll uh… be right back with pizza and refreshments.”

“Don’t mind the President,” Henry said, waving him off. “He couldn’t perceive the difference between politically correct and borderline patronizing if you were slapping him in the face with it.”

Adam said nothing, but nodded curtly at the other boy. When they were all seated in front of the TV screen, pizza boxes laid out on their laps or by their sides, Adam said, “Thank you all so much for having me.”

“What are you - giving an award speech?” Ronan snapped, with consternation. “Yeah, it’s only pizza and a movie, man. It’s no biggie.” Henry added.  
  
Adam thought that they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that pizza and a movie was the closest he’d ever come to hanging out with people his own age, a glossy illusion of another thing he hadn’t ever had before - friends. They didn’t understand that there was a part of him that had been so lonesome for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be among a group of people and actually feel like he _belonged_. Like his privacy wasn’t being invaded, like he wasn’t invading theirs.

There was a disheveled ease and comfort in the way Blue wrapped her arms around Gansey’s neck or how Henry winked notoriously at Ronan and the brimming respect they all had for one another, large enough to fill the universe.   
  
_This_ , Adam thought, was the friendship of epics. The kinds of connections they wrote storybooks about, and he was just glad to bask in the convivial nature of it, in the otherworldliness of it.

He would always be self-governed, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had to keep everyone at an arm’s length. He was tired of being lonely, of crying himself to sleep on the nights that emptiness in his heart roiled a riparian current throughout his whole body, freezing his veins.

He wanted to be reminded what it was like to _feel_ , to not be numb all of the time. Adam was yearning. He yearned for this disorderly notion of acceptance and family.

When he’d said thank you, what he’d really meant was that they were the first people who looked at him and saw something more than the broken human being his father had battered him into, more than a poor underling who’d had the misfortune to grow up on the wrong side of town.

Even Gansey, who could be condescending without realizing it, looked at Adam like he was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle that was his life. Something that warmed his heart to a point of bursting. 

They ate their pizza and talked about politics and the weather and Ronan’s obsession with the Murder Squash Song and Henry told him about how he’d taken Gansey into a hole in the wall the first time they’d met. “Not a surefire way to seduce a guy, but it worked for me, anyway.” Blue did an awful job of reading the palm of his hand and Gansey asked him “What do you know about Welsh kings?” and he learned that they were on a quest for a king and invited him to be a part of their daring adventure.

Gansey’s face had blanched when Adam had told them about Noah.

“We’ll ask for his life back.” Gansey had deduced, immediately. “He never deserved to die in my stead. Nobody deserves that.”

It had taken awhile for them to get back in the mood after Adam had dropped the ghost bomb, but when they eventually did, Adam felt like he’d known these people for years. They hung out well into the night, until Adam reminded himself that he had school in the morning and his legs cramped up and the sky had begun to lighten outside the windows.

There was something about them all, something about being one part of a symmetric whole. Something endearing about Gansey’s effusive ways and Blue’s gilded smile and Henry’s constant quips and the way Ronan’s laugh melted into his chest and how everyone seemed like they were a little bit in love with each other and then Adam realized, somewhere in between the laughs and the hearth and that sense of not being alone, that he was happy.

Happiness had always been such a fleeting notion, almost imaginary in its elusiveness. The cake that he couldn’t eat, the balloon that floated out of his hands. And the extent of Adam’s own misery the beast that blocked the doorway to heaven.

It came to him like a heart attack, like having the wind knocked out of his chest. He was happy and he would try and keep the taste of that happiness on his tongue for as long as he was able.

Adam then met Ronan’s eyes. When Adam’s mouth quirked, Ronan’s expression stilled for a moment before turning to a loose smile. Adam’s said, _I think I owe you everything._ Ronan’s said, _don’t be dramatic, asshole_ but in between them, even as they sat across from each other, with nothing but their gazes touching, burned a sort of quiet and sizzling understanding that was also a longing that was also a promise. Adam never wanted to let go. Ronan’s eyes said he wouldn’t ever have to.

As he was leaving, Blue followed him out the front door.

“I really am sorry, you know,” he said, after some hesitation. “I was a dick after we broke up.”  
  
“I know,” she said, standing up on her tiptoes and placing a kiss on his temple.

“You’re too good for me, Blue Sargent,” he said, at her floppy, forgiving smile. “Don’t I know it,” she replied, with a wink. “We’ll see you tomorrow, right? There’s these ruins Gansey’s found that he can’t stop muttering on about. We’re going to go check them out.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Adam assured.

“Can you believe we’re friends with a bunch of bastard raven boys?” Blue said, with a rueful twinkle in her dark eyes.

“Serendipity?” Adam proposed.

“Foolishness,” Blue assured.

“What happened to all that sensibility of yours?” Adam asked.  
  
“It fell in love with a king-hunting fanatic.”

When Adam laughed, Blue narrowed her eyes. “If you tell Ronan I said this I might have to kill you and scatter your bones across the Pacific, but I think he’s really fallen for you.”

Adam was quiet a moment. “A raven boy might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he admitted, voice almost choking with emotion. Blue’s smile was secretive and knowing as she turned back to look at her boys. Ronan had his arms on Gansey’s shoulders and Gansey was laughing heartily over whatever he’d said. Henry stood in between them, a drunken grin on his face. “Yeah,” she said. “I think so too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- yes i totally had to mirror that kiss in the raven king with the fireflies and the deer  
> \- this was a super long chapter to make up for the lengthy wait  
> \- so this is the second-last chapter of the story, that means there's still ONE more to go!! :D  
> \- please do check out my other pynch fanfics if you're interested  
> \- let's be friends & cry over our fictional ships together. come talk to me on my [tumblr.](winterblues.tumblr.com)  
> \- today's song rec, as the chapter's namesake, Dirty Dreams by Work Drugs  
> \- i'm sorry if the chapter name is deceiving, y'all don't want me writing smut, TRUST me on that!  
> \- don't forget to comment <3


	10. Nameless Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"He reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for."_
> 
> _\- Richard Siken,_

* * *

“Tell me something,” Adam said softly, lips ghosting against Ronan’s skin. “What is this? I mean - what are _we?”_

Ronan cocked an eyebrow. “We?” 

“Nothing,” he replied, awfully. 

Adam looked up from where he was placing kisses against Ronan's stomach to stare. “I’m about to go down on you and you’re telling me that’s nothing?”

“I don’t like naming things.”

“I’m not a pet bird,”

“So I’ve gathered, Parrish.”

Adam frowned and a tiny crease erupted on his chin, Ronan leaned over and slid his lip up Adam’s jaw to smoothen it out but Adam pulled consciously away. Ronan let out a disapproving growl as Adam tipped Ronan’s own chin up with his thumb, forcing him to look at him. Those dizzying blue eyes of his bore into Ronan’s and he felt something in his chest collapse.

“What do you want me to say?” Ronan asked, voice bored and slightly frustrated.

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

 _I’m thinking I want you and you want me and that’s all that fucking matters in this moment. I’m thinking this is something secret and unrepeatable and unimaginable. Larger than dreams. A reverie of some kind. I’m thinking your hands are like music pulling me under. I'm also thinking that if I say any of this out loud you'll dissolve in front of my eyes and it'll be over._   
  
Ronan thought he’d dodged a bullet the last time Adam had expressed a doubt about this, but apparently there were no amount of kisses that would convince him. “Damn Parrish, at this point it feels like you’re just looking for an excuse to bolt.”

“That’s not it,” Adam said, seemingly searching his eyes for questions Ronan simply didn’t have the answers to. He’d told him already, he wasn’t good with words, he’d never been. So what was it that he wanted now? Did he want Ronan walking around with a neon sign around his neck that forecasted what he was feeling every second of every day?

“I know you’re a florist and all that, but I didn’t know I had to make up a flowery declaration of my love in order to woo you.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Forget it,” but Ronan yanked the other boy to him, his nails digging into the nape of Adam’s neck. “Look at me and tell me that I’m not fucking into you.” Adam opened his mouth and closed it, then tried again and failed again before pulling him into a sweeping kiss - one that Ronan felt in his bones.

“You should become a poet,” Adam mocked, as they pulled away.

“Fuck off, Parrish.” Ronan said, biting into Adam’s shoulder.

“Disappointing use of ‘fuck’,” Adam noted, cocking his head to the side playfully.

“Oh, yeah?” Ronan said, pressing the length of his body up against Adam and turning them around so that he was on top. Sometimes he kissed like it was a fist fight, but this time he wanted to go slow, tauntingly slow, _agonizingly_ slow - slow enough that Adam could let this, whatever it was between them, simmer its way into his head. Slow enough that there was no more room left for doubt.

Ronan traced with his fingers Adam’s eyebrows and the back of his eyelids, the skin under his eyes, the strange and delicate lines of his cheekbones. He brought Adam’s fingers to his mouth and pressed kisses against them one by one. “I’ve heard of foot fetishes, but this is new,” Adam teased, as Ronan left a hot blazing trail from his knuckles up to his wrist.

Ronan stared at Adam’s hands, the boyish jutting of his thumbs, his long, slender fingers, all those dark healing blisters and calluses forming a ruddy patchwork like a fresco of some sort.

“I don’t get it,” Adam said. He’d been watching Ronan intently, surveying him even. His sandy brows drawn up as he unintentionally bit at his lower lip. “They’re nothing special.” Ronan wanted to say, _they’re fucking beautiful is what they are,_ instead he said. “Shut up, Parrish.”

They marked each other and Ronan ran his hands over Adam’s ribs and Adam found every spot that made Ronan want to throw his head back and scream. He was emblazing a thousand assurances into Adam’s chest when his phone rang, a loud and crass ringtone that he’d chosen specifically because it bugged the hell out of Gansey but also as an excuse to not have to carry his phone around anywhere.

He ignored the screeching phone but Adam murmured from beneath him. “Phone,” Ronan merely shrugged like he couldn’t care less but Adam’s arm was already stretching out for it.   
  
“It’s making me bleed from my one good ear, Lynch.”  
  
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, okay.” Ronan groaned, pushing off of Adam to grab his phone off the desk drawer.

He took one look at the name that lit up and switched it to silent mode before tossing it somewhere behind him, not caring whether it landed on bed or linoleum. Adam pressed a hand to his abdomen as he leaned in again. “What is it now?” Ronan said.  
  
“Who was calling?”

“My patience. He says he’s hanging by a thread.”

“Ha,” Adam muttered. “Seriously though. Who was it?”

“My dick brother,”

“The little one?”

“The _assface_ one,” Ronan corrected. “Declan. Probably just calling because he wants help with the client list or to chastise me some more about how I’m the world’s worst brother.”

“Why?” Adam pressed. “Tell me more.” Ronan stared at him in unimpressed silence a moment before muttering, “You know, I’m going to get turned off if we’re sitting down to have a long emotional talk about our feelings.”

“You have feelings?” Adam asked wryly, expression feigning innocence.

“Don’t be a smartmouth,”

“How else am I supposed to keep up with you?”

Ronan smiled against Adam’s mouth, pulling him in for another kiss. Adam tolerated it only for a few seconds before pushing himself off again and crossing his arms over his chest.   
  
“What’s going on with your brother?”   
  
“What’s it to you, Dr. Phil?”

“Look, I don’t know how they do it in your world, but here on planet earth we actually open up to each other when we’re in a relationship with someone.”

“A relationship, huh?” Ronan said, unable to keep the surprise off his face.

“Am I mistaken?” Adam asked, the crack in his voice ostensible.   
  
Ronan's smile was a slow crawl. “Nah, that’s a word I can definitely get used to.” 

Adam broke into a smile of his own, “You know…” he said, taking Ronan’s hand in his and locking their fingers together. “You taught me what it feels like to want something other than disappearance, to take my life back into my own hands and foster some kind of a home out of it. So… Thank you. I just… I just wanted to tell you that.”

Ronan didn’t know what to say to this, so he tightened his grip against Adam’s palm, ignored the heat pooling in his stomach, and sighed. “Things got pretty awful after dad kicked it. Declan and I couldn’t look one another in the eye without wanting to beat the shit out of each other. I think a part of me blames him for how it all went down. He’s all… fancy ass business suits and entrepreneurship and I’m just looking to get by, taking things one day at a time. Anyway, he got to control our funds and our lives because he was the eldest. Like age has anything to do with intelligence. I couldn’t deal with it, his patronising attitude, the way he tries to micromanage me. I don’t think we’ll ever get along again.” Ronan admitted.

It was strange, he’d never said those words aloud to anyone before, not even Gansey, even though he suspected Gansey knew. He felt like he’d just lost weight, throwing it all out onto the pavement, all the dirt and the gritty.  
  
Adam merely blinked. “Again?”

When Ronan blinked back, Adam simply shrugged. “That implies you got along once.”

“Maybe.” Ronan said, voice gruff as gravel.

“You got along once and you’re both assholes. You’ll get along again.” Adam said, throwing his own words back at him with a smug hint in his tone.

Ronan shook his head, unimpressed. “What did I say about being a smartmouth?”

* * *

“Okay,” Declan said. “The second I saw you walk in through that door on time for once in your life, I thought - hey, either all of hell has frozen over or there’s gonna be a catch. At least I was right about the latter.”

Ronan merely scoffed, unbothered by his brother’s condescending tone, the thin, disapproving line of his mouth, the stream-cleaned suit he had on. They were so dissimilar that sometimes he couldn’t believe they were related. Then he reminded himself to try, he reminded himself that for better or for worse, they were family, and for Matthew’s sake and maybe even for their own, they had to act like it.

They were standing outside of The Snakepit where Declan leaned against his car and stuck a cigarette in between his teeth. He offered one to Ronan but he didn’t take it. Alcohol was his poison of choice, plus, nicotine made your teeth rot and your breath stink.  

“So,” Declan continued, rolling his shoulders as he lit up, the expensive watch on his wrist glinting against the sun rays. “What did you want to talk about?”

Ronan squinted into the light, staring up at the cerulean sky to avoid meeting his older brother's eyes. “You were right,” he said, tone even and low. Declan blinked at him like he was unable to recognize the words. “What?” his blue eyes had gone wide.

“I won’t repeat myself, asshole.”

“I was right… ?” disbelief straddled his features. There was a very smug part of Ronan that found this blatant bafflement of his amusing. The other part just wanted to get this conversation over with as soon as naturally possible.

“We have to sort this shit out for Matthew,” Ronan answered, keeping his tone as factual and emotionless as possible. Declan looked at him heavily a moment. “Who are you and what have you done with my shithead of a brother?”

Ronan huffed out a breath. “Why are you trying to make this harder on yourself than it has to be, man?” he asked.

Declan just shook his head. “Now that’s the brother I know and loathe, but yes. I’m… I’m glad you came around.” Ronan nodded and began to turn on his heel, but Declan wasn’t done.   
  
“Can I ask what instigated this change of heart?”   
  
Ronan bit his bottom lip, thinking of Adam as he smiled up at him, the encouraging tone of his voice, the way his eyes borrowed light from the room. “Does it matter?” Ronan asked.   
  
“No,” Declan said, flicking his smoke and ashing it out beneath his foot on the concrete. “I guess not.”  
  
Ronan turned again. “You still hate me though, don’t you?” Declan called.

Ronan made an aboutface and met his brother’s eyes for the first time in a long time. The last time he’d been looking his brother straight in the face he’d been seconds away from pummeling him. Now he saw the tiredness in his brother’s face, the circles beneath his eyes, how he looked older than he had the last time they’d faced each other.

“It got hard to look at you, okay? You remind me of him. You resemble him the most out of all of us.” He said, his lips tugging into a small frown as he gestured at Declan’s shiny shoes and black tie. Declan had ended up the entrepreneur and Ronan had ended up the farmer; Matthew was the sunny glue that held both pedestals in place.

Declan looked torn, there was something hurtful and graven in his following words. “But you were always Dad’s favorite,”

Ronan shrugged. “Yeah, but I could never be his mini-me. You have fucking prodigy written all over you.”

Declan smiled a little then, running a hand over the back of his neck. The smile was bitter and exhausted. “I know I’ve been a shitty brother, I know I probably should’ve tried harder, but it’s not like I haven’t done my part, Ronan. You try being the middleman. It gets hellish. I handle all of Dad’s sales now, and it’s not an easy task. He had some very questionable alliances with some very dangerous people. Handling that plus the tattoo parlor, it’s been driving me a little over the edge.”

Ronan’s mouth dropped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“I tried, you ungrateful little pissant.”   
  
“Well, try harder next time.”

“You’re such a little asshole.” Declan retorted, but he was smiling still. Perhaps they weren’t so different after all. Matthew would always be their common denominator, but Ronan could see it now - Declan’s admirance for their father, his need for approval and his fraternal instinct, he’d been trying to protect them all along, dabbling in all that shady nonsense his father had gotten himself into before passing away, cleaning up a dead man's mess. 

“We’ll figure this out, won’t we?” he called on after Ronan as he made his way back into the shop for the appointment he’d been penciled in for. “Yeah,” Ronan said, softly. “Yeah, we will.”

They weren’t ready to share a beer and spend more than a couple hours in each other’s stead, but it was a start.

* * *

“Sit still,” Ronan said, tightening his grip around Adam’s wrist. They were all sprawled out in the flower shop to give Adam some company during his shift. Blue was sat in the clerk’s chair - there wasn’t a force on earth that could keep her away from chairs with wheels. Noah spun her around enthusiastically, his eyes shining brighter than his dull translucent body.

The night before, while Adam had been sleeping, Ronan had rather unconsciously begun to trace a pattern of a tattoo across his skin. There was something warm and freeing and thrilling about falling asleep next to someone.

He was mostly used to sleeping alone, even though back when he lived at home, he’d let Matthew curl silently into his side like a cat when he was having nightmares. Even though he still remembered being eight years old and going to sleep in between the reassuring bodies of his parents, his father snoring loud enough to wake the cattle, his mother’s perfume in the air.

This was different. This was intimate and elating in a way he hadn’t ever experienced before.   
  
Ronan knew that Adam Parrish had trouble letting himself relax in the company of other people, Adam probably thought he didn’t notice, but he’d seen the subtle flinch in his shoulders sometimes when Ronan wrapped his arms around him, he’d taken note of that wary wrinkle in between his eyebrows that he’d smoothened out a thousand times, the way touch was like learning a new language and they were both awful communicators.

That night, when Adam let himself fall asleep against Ronan, Ronan had thought he was going to have a cardiac arrest. He’d spent hours just watching Adam sleep before he’d finally drifted off himself. He’d never seen Adam look so at ease before, and it was a religious sight.

The way the moonlight splashing through the windows split the light twinkling of freckles on his cheeks, the way his breaths came all drowsy and slow, his lips parted slightly, all his features straightened out against the ever-pressing dark. It was like watching a sleeping prince from a storybook. It was a dream spread out next to him - a dream he could touch and kiss and hold, a dream he never wanted to wake up from.

There was also the exhilaration of feeling somebody else’s heartbeat pressed against your back, or their breath in your mouth or their legs entangled with yours. Ronan thought of a future of waking up to this every morning and wondered how he’d ever make it a foot away from the bed. They were both lonesome creatures, but they were learning to form a discernable whole.

They were still their own people, Ronan wasn’t one for dependence or clinginess, but they were binary stars, two working parts of a machine inching towards a similar goal. They would undo their respective misgivings and practice healing through the smokescreens of each other’s eyes and bodies.

Ronan still had unpleasant thoughts; wondering what would happen to him if he were to lose this, of trying to figure out what this was supposed to be in the long run, or if he had to give a name to it at all. There was fear, too, clouding his judgement. Fear that this boy now wielded the power to ruin him, and the last time he’d given that right to someone he’d lived to regret it and fallen asleep to visions of his father’s blood splattered on his hands. Fear that he’d wake up one morning and find Adam had changed his mind, gotten up and walked away. Fear that nothing would change, or that everything will.

Finally, he’d pushed all the unwelcome thoughts away and just lost himself to the slippery silence, to the feel of Adam’s skin warm against his finger, to that feeling that was so frightening and intrusive and lovely that it was something deeper than love and larger than grief. He’d felt himself whittling away there in the dark room next to this beautiful boy, so he began to trace a pattern into being, one that would spell all this feeling out for him.

The tattoo design he’d come up with was every heartbeat skipped, every blue-numbing stare, every burnt kiss etched to life.

So he told Adam about it and practically left him no choice but to comply when he sat him down and began to cover every inch of the pale skin skin on his arms in flowers. “Why do I have to do this, again?” Adam had asked, trying to sound annoyed but failing considerably.   
  
“Because you’re my muse, now _sit still._ ” Ronan had replied, in between clenched teeth with a stem in his mouth. 

“You say things like that so casually,” Adam had said, his gaze locked on Ronan, voice strange. He looked humbled and Ronan hated the fact that he got that smitten look on his stupid handsome face every single time somebody said something nice to him. He hated that Adam was so used to feeling like an insult that he’d forgotten how to take a compliment. He hated himself for noticing it in the first place, because then he felt like taking Adam’s face in his hands and spending countless hours reciting to him everything that he was, everything that he thought he wasn’t. Ronan hated it. He hated it so much that he almost loved it.  

But Ronan was a fan of watered down words, he chose to dilute the emotion out of everything because that meant he didn’t have to make himself too vulnerable because that meant it wasn’t actually chewing a hole right through him because that meant he was still keeping up with this carefully crafted persona of his; this new, guarded and volatile person that he’d chosen to become.

“What can I say? I’m a romantic,” he’d replied, with hefty sarcasm, even with his heart beating warning notes.  
  
Now Blue peered down at them from her mobile throne with her chin propped under her fist. “You draw really pretty flowers for someone who wears leather jackets and listens to death metal,” she said.

“And you sure do think quite high and mighty of yourself for someone so short.” Ronan snapped, without looking up from his masterpiece. He wanted his flowers to look realistic, he wanted to get every detail of them right, from the veins to the hues to the petals. It was going to make a highly complicated and yet a highly satisfactory design when it was done.  
  
“And I’m feeling quite alive for a dead person, so we’re all overcoming our stereotypes today. Now can I go back to spinning you, Blue?” Noah asked, as he ruffled Blue’s hair like it was a small animal. She nodded gently at him and he whisked her around again. Blue chuckled, shrill and childish, her legs dangling about an inch off the seat.

Gansey and Henry joined them soon after. “We come bearing burgers!” Gansey announced, ambling into the store in his favorite canary-yellow shirt and brown chinos, hauling paper bags of food with a fervent glow in his eyes. “And all the tools and ramparts we need to get properly shitfaced.” Henry added.

“We’re not getting _too_ drunk, alright? We still have a cave to explore after.” Gansey chided. “Plus, the last time I fell victim to the brutal and inexorable consequences of alcohol I -”

“Actually had some fun and it almost killed me. I mean, I might have even gone an entire hour without mentioning my precious king. A whole entire _hour!_ Can you imagine the _horror?”_ Henry teased, altering his voice dramatically and miming dismay.

Blue laughed and Gansey pursed his lips. “I was just going to say I lost my glasses, but that was uncalled for. I totally know how to have fun.”

“Yeah, this one time, I went to a black-tie party without a tie. I felt so rebellious, and they all looked at me like I’d committed a felony. It was so exciting. My skin still tingles at the thought!” Henry swooned thematically.

“Oh once, I took a left turn without turning my indicator on first. It was wild.” Blue added.

“The Queen of England tweeted me, and I didn’t tweet back.” Henry continued.  
  
“Actually, when I was fourteen, I snuck into a museum after-hours to take a picture of this plaque they had up for Glendower and I was almost sent to juvy.” Gansey enlightened.   
  
“But your rich daddy saved you,” Blue said, sticking a playful tongue out at her boyfriend. 

“Oh, come on, Jane. Spare my feelings this once?”  
  
“Spare your feelings like the time she put raisins instead of chocolate-chips in the mocha you ordered at Nino’s?” Henry recalled.

“It was because he complained to my manager about the quality of my service!” Blue groaned, in her defense.

“That was because you _refused_ me service, Jane,” Gansey said, tolerably.

Blue only shrugged. “Management reserves the right to refuse service to jackasses. I’m management. You’re the jackass.”

“Okay new rule,” Noah said, effectively shutting everyone up. “If _I’m_ not complaining, nobody else gets to.” He waited a beat, and when no-one defied him, he went back to experimentally shoving Blue’s spinning chair.   
  
Gansey passed around everyone their food and stared pointedly from Ronan to Adam.

“Shall I ask?” he said, cocking an eyebrow as Adam’s cheeks went flush. “He wants me to be the specimen for his new tattoo idea,” Adam supplied.

Ronan smirked and grabbed the paper bag from Gansey, calling a break on their little experiment. “Can I move now?” Adam asked, the vibrant rainbow hues of the flowers striking against the light white of his skin. “No! The lilies bring out your eyes, Thumbelina,” Blue mused.

Ronan let out a hoarse laugh. “Yeah, yeah. A man has to eat.”

Adam gently shook off the blooms and tucked into the burger Gansey had supplied him. Initially, he’d spent twenty minutes arguing with Ronan about how he didn’t want them to start buying things for him and Ronan had said that it was part of the Gansey package and that he was buying for everyone and so it didn’t matter.

“This is really good,” Adam said, between mouthfuls. Ronan finished his in four big bites and washed it down by emptying three cans of beer all within the span of five minutes.

“You’re a pig, Ronan,” Blue said.

“Beats being a maggot,” Ronan muttered.  
  
“Save your energy for an adventure, folks! I’m on the precipice of a discovery!” Gansey said, sitting with his back to the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him and a hefty little notebook tucked underneath his arm.

“You’re always on the precipice of a discovery, man,” Henry pointed out.  
  
“Oh! An adventure! Can I come?” Noah said, with an enthusiastic smile. “Of course,” Blue said, and enveloped him in a small hug. The boy looked so much more alive when he was around Blue, almost like he wasn’t shifting in between worlds.   
  
When everyone finally took off and promised to rendezvous later at Monmouth Manufacturing to grab caving gear and the likes, Ronan lingered, even though he knew Adam had to get back to work soon. “You know my arms are stiff,” Adam said, walking over and closing the distance in between them. There was a part of Ronan that would never get over how beautiful Adam looked with his hair touched by sunlight and that teasing smile on his face.

Gansey always talked about fate and serendipity and how the universe fought to bring forces together, Ronan had waved it all off as wishwash at the time, but looking at Adam now, he thought that maybe there was some truth laced into all that romanticized bullshit.

After his parents had died, after everything that had transpired in between him and Declan, he’d been left feeling unmendable, he’d been left feeling nothing at all. His emotions hovering all over the place. Sometimes, weighing him down with the intensity of them and other times, leaving him hollowed.

Gansey had tried his best to be there for him, to make him feel better, but the only things that had kept Ronan from spiralling off the edge was alcohol and nerve-wrecking street races. Mindlessness and tug-of-wars with his own psyche.   
  
Ronan had thought he’d become something sharp and violent, something people were meant to fall and cut themselves on. He’d thought he’d given up on this unfair fucking curse of a world where parents died and brothers slept and families were annihilated. He’d lost his will to live, but hung on purely for the sake of Matthew, for the sake of Gansey, this friend of his who so blindly believed in him, who needed him.

He’d forgotten about living for himself entirely. Life was just this compulsory thing that he had to comply to until his time was up. 

There were still days he felt like that, but the pain was duller, reduced to background noise. Perhaps Adam was right, perhaps these things weren’t meant to go away, every broken jagged piece had led him here after all, hadn’t it? Here, by Gansey’s side, here, against Adam’s mouth. There was no reset button, no magical solution, but Adam diluted that dull ache that threatened to eat at him every now and then, he made the world brighter and ringing louder. He was resonant, and Ronan had almost forgotten the definition of that word.

All he needed from Adam now, was for him to stay. He didn’t like naming things and he didn’t like labels, but his mind looped around words like _love_ and _dreams_.

“What are you thinking?” Adam asked, studying him curiously, his eyes like desert stars.

“It doesn’t matter,”

“It’s you. It matters.”

When Ronan met Adam’s eyes again, his heart shuffled in his chest. He was surrounded by the ocean and it was burning. He was burning. Adam’s lips were fire and Ronan was more-than-willing to sweep up the ashes.   
  
“I was thinking about doing this,” he said, as he kissed him. The future was wicked and uncertain and thrilling and insane, but Ronan thought that for once, he was looking forward to it. If his life was a race, he was finally willing to take his time getting to the finish line.

Maybe there was no name for moments like these, large and otherworldly even in an ordinary minute tucked into a mundane world. Maybe this was where his life began again, in between Adam's breaths and a quest for a king and Henrietta's drowsy air. Maybe Adam was the flower in his mouth, and Ronan was the needle in his. Maybe right now, the fact that they'd found each other was all that mattered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- so yeah, that's it. the grand finale. the last chapter in the story. it was quite a ride, and i hope you all enjoyed reading it just as much as i enjoyed writing it.  
> \- i also hope the ending felt satisfactory, this fic got so much longer than i initially meant for it to be. wrapping it up was more difficult than i thought, parting with it is going to be even more so.  
> \- if you're still into my writing and would like to read more it'd be awesome if you checked out 'Light With A Sharpened Edge' the other pynch fic i'm currently working on and a couple of old ones that i wrote earlier, too. if you want. just check out my other works. :)  
> \- finally thank you so much for all your comments and support. please don't hesitate to leave me a comment now before you go.  
> \- and come talk to me on [tumblr](winterblues.tumblr.com) anytime. i'm friendly, i promise. :D

**Author's Note:**

> i am not a tattoo artist or a florist, just a writer obsessed with a ship so i apologize for any inconsistencies. i have done little research since its a fanfic and have no idea how actual tattoo shops/flower shops work. i hope its still believable though.
> 
> this is going to be a multi-chapter fic because i'm an idiot with too many feelings about these idiots and slow burn is my favorite circle of hell. i hope you guys will stick around till the end. the story won't be too long and shouldn't exceed five chapters. 
> 
> please leave me a comment if you liked it.
> 
> come fangirl with me on [tumblr](winterblues.tumblr.com).
> 
> this isn't important but all of my chapter names are probably going to be song titles. the title of this story as a whole is also, in fact, a song title. 'body gold' by oh wonder. 12/10 would recommend. 'painting flowers' is by all time low.


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